


Redeemer

by coveredinfeels



Series: Redeemer [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: BAMFs, Dorian is like a Tevinter Malcontent magnet, M/M, or something
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 07:46:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 45,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3602007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coveredinfeels/pseuds/coveredinfeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian is not returning to Tevinter, as such. He just happens to be the best person to pop over the border and chase down a few leftover Venatori, that's all. He'll be back to Skyhold in no time.</p><p>Turns out the road to starting a revolution is paved with good intentions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gize

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off a kink meme fill I haven't brought over here yet because I wanted to tweak some things about it, and while I was doing so I thought, hey, why don't I write a couple of extra background snippets and then this happened.

The Inquisition cannot risk sending its forces over the border into Tevinter to chase up the remains of the Venatori, not without being accused of an attempted invasion.

Dorian, however, is still a citizen of Tevinter, albeit a mildly disgraced and definitely-- as well as defiantly-- scandalously deviant one. Because of this, he can do what the fuck he likes. He has several arguments with Bull over this, during one of which they actually break a bed (not, as Varric insists on putting it, "another bed").

This is why he ends up with the Chargers hanging about in the area for 'backup'. Not their boss, who will be staying with the Inquisitor if he knows what is good for him. Dorian himself has the job of making contact with the Vashoth mercenary, Gize, who Inquisition spies have previously been in touch with. All he really knows is that she runs a mercenary band, knows where some of the local Venatori hideouts are and has some interest in helping Dorian root them out, especially if he's willing to pay her and her men a fair rate for same. That it's not actually his money is a mere technicality.

The time he's spent in the South ought to have taught him better, but he's still surprised to see his contact leaning against a wall, reading a battered copy of Corti's _Summerlight_. She spots him looking at the book, raises an eyebrow. Oops. "Always thought that one rather overrated, to be honest." he says, by way of greeting.

Gize looks him over. "Fifty-seven."

"Pardon?"

"You're the fifty-seventh to tell me this is overrated. Would you like to also tell me I should read _Deep Waters_ instead? You'd get to be forty-nine."

Oh, _come on_. "Deep Waters is a _classic_."

Gize grins, showing her teeth. "It's not bad. You all say that because you think it's naughty, though. Read some Salvetti sometime." She gives him another look. " _Broken Ocean_ , maybe."

Dorian feels his face heat, because his contact just pretty much asked him if he likes men via _literary reference_. It's easier to be comfortable about these things when he's in a tavern in Skyhold than when he's back in Tevinter and in Tevene, it's hard to talk about these things without using words that are basically insults. "Shall we talk business?"

"Sure." Gize shrugs. It seems to take a long time. She has a lot of shoulder, granted. "This is my patch. Good people around here. Not mages, not rich. Good people, all the same. Venatori are fucking it all up. You help us fix this, I don't care what your tastes in literature are." She pauses. "But just out of curiosity, the rumor about you and the big guy, runs a merc company called the 'Chargers'?"

Maker's breath, how far have those rumors got? "Broadly true, although I hate to think what charming little details the rumor-mongers have added along the way."

"In one version it's you, him, _and_ the company." Gize tells him with a grin. "I'll spare you the details. Unless you call my book 'overrated' again."

"Sounds like a deal to me." Dorian says, and holds out a hand to shake on it.


	2. Drusa

With Gize and her company, he sweeps out a couple of Venatori hideouts, sends information on a couple more to Krem for the Chargers to hit. There seem to be rather more of the annoying bastards about than in the original reports, and a message goes back to Skyhold: _I may be a little longer than expected_.

It's not that the fighting is that demanding. At least, not on the scale Dorian has grown used to, which admittedly does have 'high dragon', and 'angry bear, immediately after high dragon, because Evelyn Trevelyan is _insane_ ' on it. This lot are merely proof that blood magic is not, in fact, the source of ultimate power. They're no better than bandits, really, hiding out in caves; the locals, sick of raids on their farms, mages demanding supplies off them and the occasional kidnapping, gladly point them in the right direction. "If they're attacking Tevinter citizens," Dorian says, frowning, "surely the Magisters in Vol Dorma ought to do something about it? Raids over the border are one thing, but--"

Gize laughs. "You're so cute sometimes, Pavus. All that pretty optimism."

Dorian looks out over the fields, over the broad expanse of not-very-much dotted with squat peasant houses and squat peasants, nearly as far south from Minrathous as it's possible to get and still feel superior to 'the South'. "Just tell me about this friend of yours who is going to get us into their main camp."

"Drusa is predictable. It's like trustworthy but count your fingers after she shakes your hand." Gize claps one hand on Dorian's shoulder, in a friendly manner. If it wasn't friendly he'd probably be on the ground in agony right now. "Don't worry. If she says there's a back way in, there's a back way in. If she likes you, and you let her keep anything shiny she finds, she's good to have around. Piss her off, and she'll steal the smalls right off you."

Drusa is small, dark, and delicate looking - Dorian wouldn't have been surprised if she'd told him she was from Qarinus, not from this far south. She doesn't actually specify where she is from. She does take one look at Dorian and sniggers. "Look at you. Common don't wash off, posh don't dirty up, do it."

"You can tell me how pretty I am later." Dorian tells her. "I need to know what I'm up against."

Two hours later, with not only information on how to get into the half-derelict fortress the Venatori are inhabiting, but also quite a lot of information on likely numbers of Venatori, the amount of blood magic going on (whatever "half a Magister's worth, or so" means to Drusa), and the likelihood of slaves and captives being in there to fuel same, Dorian leans back and stares at the map Drusa has scribbled all over in her spidery handwriting. "I think this might be manageable."

"Would have been easier if _somebody_ hadn't been going around making them go boom and getting the rest all paranoid." Drusa says, unwittingly starting something Dorian will never, ever, be able to escape.

Gize chuckles, clearly amused. "He does make them go boom a lot, doesn't he."

"Working for the Inquisition _does_ tend to hone one's offensive magical capability." Dorian replies, much less amused. "Gize, I have heard you quote the classics while cutting a man in half. I _know_ you can think of a better description than that."

"It's so perfectly succinct." Gize says, happily. "Boom. That is _exactly_ what you do."

Drusa is a very capable woman, despite her minor idiosyncrasies (the first time they fight together, Dorian sees her take down three Venatori in short order and then stop to cut the fingers off one to get at his rings). Dorian may never, however, forgive her for 'boom'.


	3. Avis

Gaining entrance to the fort goes well, but they have to go down before they can go back up. They end up fighting in close corners in the dungeons. It is unpleasant. Dorian is covered in bits of Venatori and there is something _stuck_ to the sharp end of his staff. Still better than the Fallow Mires, though. There is also the occasional demon, and the thick smell of old blood.

Has he mentioned lately how much he really _hates_ blood magic?

Huddled in the cells are a mix of elves and men, slaves and local peasants-- _people_ , Dorian corrects himself, because there's no point in categorizing them now. Some of them just blink, dazed, not sure if they are rescued or whether Dorian is just some new source of horror; a few accept Gize's offer of hastily looted weapons. There are a few smaller cells, which when Drusa jimmies them open mostly contain corpses.

One contains an elf, curled in on himself where he's chained to the wall.

At least until Drusa gets closer, when he lashes out with impressive speed, nearly catching her. "Lively." she says, rolling her eyes at Dorian who is at the doorway. "Quit it, we're here to help."

"Sure." the elf says, with a glare at Dorian. "Mages. You're here to _help_. I believe it."

Dorian is about to say something, but Drusa makes a quick _shut up_ motion at him. "Well, I'm here to slit throats and nick their shiny. Pavus is the one with the thing about helping. Also making things go boom. Still, I get you. Mages aint trustworthy, in generality."

"I have known you less than three days and you already _literally_ stole my smalls." Dorian reminds her, because he's still a little put out by that.

"You didn't believe Gize when she'd said I could." Drusa explains, then turns back to the elf. "Look, we're going to go upstairs and kill stuff now. Everyone else is going out the back, so--"

"Upstairs." the elf says, flatly.

"Can't go downstairs from here without digging, and I don't have a shovel, and I think Pavus is probably too posh to dig anyway." Drusa tilts her head. "Problem?"

"There's someone I don't want to let anybody else kill."

There's something in his eyes Dorian doesn't want to think about, but he has to. He's spent too long looking the other way, trying to find excuses for his homeland. Blasting through the chains that hold the elf to the wall is easy, even if Drusa starts and gives him a _you idiot_ look. He keeps a dagger at his waist, a habit from the Inquisition, for dealing with enemies who think if they can just exhaust his magic, if they can just get close enough--

He draws it, takes it carefully by the blade, and holds it out, hilt-first, to the elf (Drusa's expression now says _you fucking idiot_ ). "My name is Dorian Pavus. I promise to do my best not to kill whoever it is until you've gotten your turn."

Slowly, warily, the elf takes the dagger from him. "Avis. I promise not to try and gut you until I've gutted that bastard first, I suppose."

"That's a start." Dorian says.

A lot of dead Venatori, and some suspicious documents that hint at links with Magisters in Vol Dorma later, Avis sits with them by a camp fire and neither tries to gut Dorian nor leave. "I know where a bunch more are." he offers. "If you weren't done making things go boom."

He hasn't let go of the dagger yet. It's red from the tip to about half way up to Avis' elbow. Dorian takes the dagger sheath from his belt and offers it over. "I do not 'make things go boom'." he says, ignoring Drusa's energetic 'making things go boom' hand motions. "However, if you had information about the locations of other Venatori strongholds, I would be glad to hear it."

"Right. You know those two mountains that kind of look like a pair of tits?"

Dorian runs through his knowledge of the local landmarks quickly. "The Varin Cascades?"

"Whatever."

Avis turns out to know quite a lot about the local Venatori, and does continue to assist them with anything that involves the chance to gut mages, and does, thankfully, manage to resist the urge to gut _Dorian_ , although it takes a while before he stops calling him 'you' or 'mage'.

The turning point is a brief reunion with the Chargers to exchange information and pass messages back into the Inquisition (including a short note to let Evelyn know that he might be extending his sojourn in Tevinter just a little longer). It turns out the messengers are Scout Harding and one very large Qunari who ought to know Dorian can handle himself by now. All the same, he's glad to see Bull again. So glad, he forgets about the consequences of sharing a tent with Bull in the middle of camp-- mostly the ones that come with neither Bull nor him being minded to be subtle after so much time apart.

There are a few looks in the morning. But it's Avis who wanders over with the broadest grin Dorian has ever seen him not aim at a corpse. "It's true. You really bend over for a Qunari."

He doesn't precisely try to keep his voice down. Dorian sighs internally. Might as well go all out, if they're going to do this. "Not always. Sometimes he goes on his back and I ride him like a pony."

Avis just loses it at that-- genuine hysteria, cackling like he's broken something. When he looks up again, his eyes are bright and the grin is more of a smile, wide and true and startling. "You would be the shittest Magister _ever_ , Pavus. You know that?"

It's probably the best compliment anyone's given him in weeks, at least when he's clothed. "All part of my charm."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a _little_ longer, though. Honest.


	4. Ismene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters appear to be getting longer. Sort of like Dorian's stay in Tevinter, ba-dam-tsh.

The Venatori are not, altogether, that organised, but they are more embedded in south Tevinter than Dorian realised. His original plans for a quick return to Skyhold are delayed, delayed, and delayed again. People-- slaves freed in the process of taking out Venatori camps, local farmers, passing mercenaries, keep just sort of turning up and passing him information or asking him for help finding relatives kidnapped by the Venatori, or asking if he could use another pair of hands.

They end up making base in an abandoned fort, east of Vol Dorma and north of the highway. It's no Skyhold, but it does for a roof over his head and a place to stash the collection of Venatori documents he's gathering, piecing together this and that.

It's not one Magister in Vol Dorma. It is not two. It is, more or less, the whole damned lot of them. Some seem to have swallowed the Venatori line, hook and sinker. Some are merely using the Venatori as a shield, frightened of the Inquisition, of the south in general. A dozen or so powerful mages, and they're letting the Venatori run amok for miles around, without care to the effects on the local population. Vol Dorma itself is really just a place where you stop when you're travelling along the highway to somewhere better, these days. A few holiday estates for those Magisters who want to escape the heat of Minrathous in the peak of summer, and a lot of faded glory. Outside Vol Dorma itself is miles and miles of highway, mines abandoned when they ran empty and the empty towns which used to grow around them, and a lot of subsistence farming. The local population is mostly nobody Minrathous would give a damn about, in other words.

There's a town guard, of course, the highway guard, such as they are, and a regiment of the Imperial Army. Of those, the Imperial Army are the most likely to move against the Venatori-- but they're garrisoned in Vol Dorma, officially, and the Senate has passed the decision-making onto the local Magisters, who are-- well, to use the phrase _thick as thieves_ would be insulting to Drusa, probably, but at any rate certainly clearly not at all inclined to make any sort of move any time soon.

At least, not against the Venatori. There is some worry in the back of his mind about how much interference it will take before they think about moving against Dorian. _Haven_. He keeps people scattered, little groups here and there, makes sure they know how to blend back into the scenery if they have to. As long as Dorian is the most obvious target, the one they'll come for, then the rest should be relatively safe.

Because Dorian has no intent of getting killed by some half-assed Venatori assassin, and no intent of turning his back on these people now.

There are relatively few mages who come to him, which is why when he first sees Ismene she is being closely escorted by Gize and one of Gize's men has her staff. She doesn't seem too perturbed by the matter. "I see the necessity for precautions." she tells him, calmly. "You seem to be quite good at making enemies."

"Making them go _boom_." Avis adds, and Drusa leans over to give him some sort of complicated thieves-guild congratulatory handshake. They're _hilarious_ , those two, with their _one joke at his expense_. Ha-bloody- _ha_.

Ismene's information, however, is deadly serious. Ismene is Laetan, until recently of Vol Dorma, and the only mage in her family. Her family who live just south of Vol Dorma. Her family who have disappeared, along with entire villages in the area.

"Magister Solinus has his estate that way." Dorian says, another map in front of him. "But he's normally in Minrathous at this time of year." At most times of year, actually, as long as there's at least one bar open. Dorian once, horrifyingly, ran into him at one of the east-Minrathous drinking establishments that are mostly known for having entirely male clientele, a lot of dark corners, and bar staff who all suffer convenient amnesia about anything they might see while they're working. He had been too drunk to recognise Dorian, thankfully.

Ismene nods. "That's empty, too. The family are all in Minrathous, I presume. Not sure what happened to the slaves-- there's no sign of a struggle there like there was in some of the villages. The only sign of anything at all is at the Brocchus estate, and that's so thick with Venatori I couldn't really get near enough to know what they're up to."

 _Well_. That doesn't bode well, in general. Cornelia Brocchus is a middle-aged, middling Magister, sitting in the seat her father left her mostly to keep it warm. Technically Altus but hardly worthy of the designation, widely reputed to be reliant on blood magic to shore up what little power she has.

What is she up to that would require a lot of Venatori and more sacrifices than really bears thinking about?

In addition to this, her estate appears to be heavily guarded with a lot more Venatori who are a lot better organised than they've seen in previous encounters. Dorian considers the numbers and comes up with a figure of more casualties on their side that he's willing to allow. "Somebody pass me the ink, please?"

Ismene reads over his shoulder. "You're _issuing a challenge_? Are you crazy?"

"Yep."

"Yes."

"Like a shaken wasp-nest."

Dorian glares at them all. "Thank you all so much for the support. This is _tradition_ , and if there's one thing the Venatori love more than blood-magic it's tradition. While they're distracted by the duel, the rest of you can find a back way in and deal with the saving people and murdering Venatori parts. Simple!"

"Apart from the bit where you have to duel a Magister." Gize says.

Dorian waves a hand airily. "It'll be fine."

"She'll be using blood magic." Drusa adds.

"Which will only give me advance knowledge of her tactics." Dorian points out.

"You die, Pavus, and I'll piss on your corpse." is, naturally, Avis' contribution.

"I don't actually need _additional_ motivation to not die, but thank you all the same." Dorian looks around the room. "It will be _fine_."

Cornelia Brocchus does respond to the challenge, because she is exactly as stupid as Dorian was hoping she would be. Ismene accompanies him on the appointed day, as his 'apprentice', and Dorian walks through the gates of the Brocchus estates and smiles at the guarding Venatori, and compliments Magister Brocchus on the daring things she's done with her gardens.

She's laid out the dueling area so that Dorian gets the sun in his eyes, of course. Host's perks. It's so cute that she thinks that _matters_. He has had five solid hours of sleep with nobody yelling _Red Templars!_ in his ear in the middle of it, is wearing clothing not soaked in damp water that smells of dead things, and isn't standing watching the Blessed Herald of Andraste root around in a bear carcass while he considers whether he should use his last lyrium potion now or wait, because in a second there will be the inevitable moment when she looks up and chirps something like _Everyone caught their breath? I think there's one last rift somewhere beyond that hill._

But Cornelia apparently thinks she'll win with the sun in his eyes-- oh, and she's just summoned something. With the sort of magic doesn't come without at least one dead body, somewhere. Can't even go one round with him without spilling blood, is that it? Isn't even willing to consider it.

Dorian's spent most of his time back in Tevinter at varying levels of angry with all this shit, but now he's really pissed. _Do you think you'll beat me like that, you sniveling symptom of the rot that's ruining **my** country? With power you had to buy from demons, paid for with pain that isn't even your own?_ This, this is what he had to come back for. He will _not_ let this stand.

It's not even a particularly good fight. As she falls, he sees one of Brocchus' apprentices lunge forward, out of the corner of his eyes, before Ismene shouts a warning. He hasn't dropped his barriers, though; the attack doesn't touch him, and the counterspell goes out without him even thinking about it. (Not _boom_ , precisely. Something like boom but more elegant, perhaps).

It's almost disappointing.

Then there's quite a lot of Venatori and the whole business does get a little hairy, except that just in the nick of time a head goes flying and Dorian looks back to see Gize swing her sword back and take a second in two at the waist.

The rest is just cleanup.

"That," Ismene says, eyes wide, perhaps a little giddy at Gize's news that her family were among those found alive, "was _amazing_. How did you learn to cast like that?"

"A good theoretical grounding at the Vyrantium circle, an apprenticeship in Minrathous, and then far too much time following an insane woman all over the blighted south." Dorian informs her, finishing up a potion and looking down at the regrettable remains of a decent set of robes that he may need to burn. "I swear, she is the worst trouble magnet. The second there is danger, there you will find Evelyn Trevelyan, running headlong into it without thought or care."

"That sounds awful." Gize intones, flatly. "Glad I don't know anybody like that."

Mystifyingly, this makes Drusa, Avis, and Ismene _all_ look at each other and giggle. Dorian decides he doesn't want to know.

The Brocchus estate they check over for supplies, loot and information and then burn; there's far too much _dear Maker no_ for anybody to ever want to live there again. About the only good thing about it is that there isn't any red lyrium-- Evelyn has him keeping an eye out just in case, but so far the Venatori here don't appear to have got their hands on the stuff, thankfully. The Magister's personal notes, encoded in a rather laughably simple cipher, suggest some sort of plan for large-scale summoning as well as a gradual descent into madness, and a lot of very incriminating information on pretty much every Magister in Vol Dorma. Some are clearly in it up to their necks, others, like Solinus, merely complicit in a lot of looking the other way.

It's the question of what he does with all this that's the issue. He doesn't believe for a moment that if he were to go to Minrathous, walk into the Senate and go "Look, maleficars!" they would actually do anything. Well, they might try to haul him through the courts for giving false witness against a Magister, that's always a possiblity. Or manufacture evidence showing Dorian was behind it all.

But they wouldn't do anything of _actual use_. Admit that Vol Dorma was overrun with Venatori and the Magisters did nothing? Encouraged it, even? That would be equivalent to admitting the entire system is broken; that Magisters do not always rule over their lessers with a fair and benevolent hand, but are in fact, at times, exactly like the stories they tell to scare little children in Ferelden.

The other option is to contact another Magister, someone who might be able to make some good use of the information. He thinks first not of his father, but of Maevaris Tilani, one of the few who actually tried to do something about the Venatori other than making vaguely disapproving noises in their general direction.

But that's rather unfair, to place this burden on her shoulders, to shift the risk to her.

He should inform the Inquisition, certainly, but he can't in good faith ask Evelyn to provide him with more than information and perhaps a few more supplies. The Inquisition has enough on it's plate in the south already, surely.

This is Tevinter, and it's not Evelyn's to sort out. Dorian will figure something out, he's sure. By _himself_.

Once he's figured out what he's going do to with all these freed captives, some of whom don't seem at all eager to just go back to their homes-- or who can't. For the moment, he has everyone who wants to stay move with him back to the Solinus estate; it's large, easily defendable (Solinus, you paranoid old sot), and better yet, Solinus didn't empty his wine cellar before he left.

In a hurry? Saw the way the wind was blowing? Thought he'd get himself some plausible deniability in case it all went wrong, perhaps - oh no, not me, I was in Minrathous all along.

He makes a mental note to see if he can get a note to Mae, ask if any other Magisters in the Vol Dorma area had recently packed up and headed north. And he needs to write to Evelyn again, because it is looking less and less likely he'll make it back in time for their next visit to the Winter Palace.

Evelyn doesn't seem to be too bothered by his inability to pick a return date and just stick with it. She writes _we all miss you_ but not _when will you be back?_. Cullen sends his next move in their game of chess-by-letter - Queen's Knight to _is the man trying to lose_? Josephine sends on some information that will be useful but seems to have presumed his stay will be extended further. Varric is still demanding those fifteen royals he thinks he won (he did _not_ ), and just says to send them back with a messenger, like he can't wait for Dorian to finish up in Tevinter and get back. (Also he did not win the bet and Dorian does not owe him anything).

He does intend to go back to Skyhold, when he is done here.

It's just that at the moment, he can't quite work out when that will be.


	5. Marcus

"You want me to do _what?_."

Dorian feels a headache coming on.

The week had started so well; most of the Venatori camps to east and south of Vol Dorma are no more, he is getting a good stream of information in and out of the city via a mix of farmers and merchants travelling to and from the city market and some of Drusa's connections, and, best of all, the Chargers (and their boss) have gotten in from Skyhold and Ismene and Krem's ongoing adorableness keeps Avis and Drusa focused on teasing Ismene and not on asking him joking questions about 'logistics', specifically the ones to do with him, Bull, and phrases like 'a fat weasel up a skinny drainpipe'. (Thank you for that mental image, Drusa. Thank you so much.)

Ismene, when she and Krem weren't making eyes at each other from across the room, had been trying to figure out what's happening with the Imperial Army - the 5th regiment should be in Vol Dorma barracks, and she used to have a friend there, but most of the army mages seem to have gone Venatori and the regiment's commander hasn't been seen at all in weeks.

Dorian wants to know what the chances are, if some Venatori-addled Magister makes the call, that he will end up facing an actual army. Rumours have it that relationships between the Magisters and the army are not good-- when are they ever?-- but traditionally it would be a sort of not-good that would end up with the Magisters getting their way anyway.

And then someone passes someone a message to pass to Ismene to pass to Dorian and he finds himself holding a request from one Marcus Aclassi, second in command of the Fifth Regiment of Tevinter, to meet with Dorian Pavus of the Inquisition. "Any relation?" he asks Krem.

Krem laughs. "A Soperati called _Aclassi_? Like asking if two dwarves are related because they both have beards. 's why I picked the name."

Oh. Right. "Sorry."

"Nah, no worries. I'm used to you being a dumb Altus shit." Krem grins at him. "At least it's not old-tongue for _peacock_."

Avis snickered from the other side of the table which Dorian decided to presume meant a lot of cock jokes were in his future. Or, since Avis was involved, a lot _more_ cock jokes. "So," he says, "I think we should take Marcus Aclassi at his word. If we can even convince him to just ignore any commands he gets from the local Magisters, it will make things a lot easier."

"And if it _is_ a trap?" Gize asks.

"We'll escape, and kill everyone." Dorian tells her, smiling at an old memory.

Ismene nods. "You are good at that."

"Learnt from the best."

Which is how he is in a small watch-fort east-north-east of Vol Dorma, just out of the boundaries of what he'd call _his territory_ , standing in front of a man his father's age who has just asked him to do something absolutely _insane_.

"You want me to do _what?_."

"Issue an Edict of Reformation against the Magisters of Vol Dorma." Marcus repeats, calmly. "Did you, or did you not, defeat Magister Brocchus in a duel?"

"It wasn't a very good-- well, yes. You heard about that?"

Marcus doesn't actually answer. "So you are now a Magister of Vol Dorma. You inherited her seat through combat."

" _Technically_. I would have to go to Minrathous to have it officially ratified, and whether they'd accept it is another matter entirely." Dorian taps his chin. "Didn't actually think about it. I don't really want to be a Magister, and I think the fact that I set her estate on fire and am widely regarded as a south-loving traitor might count against me."

"Sounds like politics." Marcus says. He smiles-- the calm mask drops a little. This man, Dorian realises, this man knows exactly what he's asking Dorian to do. "I'm just a soldier, Magister Pavus. A Soperati. We don't understand politics. You're a Magister of Vol Dorma. I'm not supposed to move my men against those Venatori filth without permission from the Magisters of Vol Dorma. A majority vote of all those in good standing, I think it is?"

"Please don't call me _Magister_ ," Dorian tells him. "Pavus will do fine. But-- yes, I do see where you're going with this. The Magisters of Vol Dorma have failed in their duty, so I invoke the Edict of Reformation to have them all removed from their seats, and then you and your men are more or less required to follow me, the one remaining, and then everything is sunshine and rainbows-- oh, wait, no, scratch the last part. And then they try to kill us all. More than usual, that is."

Marcus sighs. "If I could see any other path, I would have taken it. My commander tried to reason with the Magisters. Do you know where that got him?"

"No." Dorian says. "Missing, isn't he?"

"Not _entirely_." Marcus says. "We've found parts. Not sure where they stashed the head-- I heard a rumour that Magister Ossis collects skulls."

Ah. Right. Dorian frowns. "I would very much like to accept your help in dealing with the Venatori. But this-- you are asking me to make a decision which will likely not see not just you and I, but your entire regiment labelled as traitors to the Imperium. To seize control of Vol Dorma, drive out the Magisters and the Venatori, and then-- then what?"

"Figured we'd play it by ear." Marcus tells him. "Seems to have been working well enough for you so far."

This is insane. Ridiculous. He can't believe he's considering it. "I might well get you and all your men killed."

"I'm in the army, Pavus. I did my time in Seheron. We're used to getting stupid orders from mages that might get us all killed." Marcus holds out his hand. "Having one who actually takes three seconds to worry about that fact will be a delightful novelty."

And that's how he gets an actual army.

Marcus actually reminds him, oddly enough, of Cullen, in some ways; good with strategy, good with his recruits, not bad at chess.

He does fuss rather a lot. Dorian is planning to make a very public and irreversible statement of _fuck you all_ to Minrathous, in the form of an edict last issued well over a hundred years ago and an actual large-scale military campaign and also the death by duel, assassination or Avis of a large proportion of the ruling class of Vol Dorma. Of course he's not getting enough sleep or eating right.

It's oddly touching, though, that Marcus still worries over those matters, like Dorian is a raw recruit, some untried boy. The phrase _father figure_ does come to mind, and then Dorian forcibly puts it out of mind, because there are a great many levels of _not going there_ involved.

And he has to concentrate on his plan. Their plan. The one that is either going to be a giant step towards making some genuine change in Tevinter or is going to get him and a lot of people he cares about killed. "You should speak to the troops." Marcus tells him.

This is how Dorian ends up, panicking, in front of a crowd composed of a mix of Marcus' troops and a motley assortment of mercenaries, former farmers, former slaves, and disgruntled Laetan mages. He doesn't think of himself as a natural leader, really. Charming, yes. Takes to most social situations like a duck to water; certainly, that goes without saying.

Standing in front of a lot of people who have every reason to resent being told to listen to some Altus mage who thinks he's in charge; that's terrifying.

"Friends." he says. "Countrymen." As if he is making a speech before the senate in Minrathous. That part he knows. Then-- fuck, all the pretty words he had prepared have just flown straight out of his head. "You know, I'm still not sure I have the right to command you to fight for me." he admits. The crowd is silent. "I suppose I can only ask you to fight _with_ me."

And then he bows his head low, closes his eyes, and waits to see what happens.

He's not sure exactly where it starts from, but there's a ripple of applause, somebody cheers, then they all take it up, and then it's a wall of sound with Marcus hauling him upright and patting him on the back. "I--" He's startled, genuinely. They weren't the words he'd planned. They weren't even very good words, really. Why is everyone so--

"Pavus." Marcus says. "You were too long in the south if you've forgotten what it means to a Tevinter, to see an Altus lower his head to _anyone_."

"Honestly," Ismene says, shaking her head. "Do you even remember you're an Altus?"

"You dumb shit." Avis says, hand resting on the dagger at his waist, the one Dorian handed over what seems like forever ago.

"To be fair, we _do_ only keep him around to look pretty and make things go boom." Drusa adds. "Don't be mean."

And Gize smiles. " _And one voice raised, to break the silence of the morn; the dawn-lark sings, awake, awake; one voice that starts a thousand more; a chorus to greet the rising of the sun_."

Dorian sighs, dramatically. "Still his most overrated work. Really, you couldn't think of a single appropriate quote from _anywhere_ else?"

Gize just shrugs. "Sixty-three."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then there were five.
> 
> There's one more member of Dorian's "inner circle" to go, but next we detour for some adventures with a friend of Hawke who apparently wants some help dealing with slavers who have been smuggling captured southerners over the border into Tevinter.


	6. Broody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While he's preparing for the assault on Vol Dorma, Dorian gets a visit from an old Inquisition friend - and a request for help.

_A friend of Hawke's from Kirkwall, an elf by the name of Fenris, has recently contacted me. Apparently, having gone to the Anderfels to look for Hawke, he has uncovered a number of slaver operations connected to the Venatori, moving people over the border into Tevinter. Their main camps are in Tevinter itself, west and north of Vol Dorma. While the Inquisition doesn't have any forces in Tevinter itself, perhaps Dorian could help out?_

_-Cullen_

"Sorry," Varric says, "Could you repeat that? I must be going deaf in my old age."

"Hawke's friend Fenris is hunting Venatori slavers, and I'm writing to Dorian so he can help out?" Evelyn looks puzzled. "I thought you'd want to know. He's an old friend of yours, isn't he?"

"And did Cullen say anything about Fenris?"

Evelyn tilts her head. "Um... elf, ex-slave, friend of Hawke, good in a fight?"

"Sparkler is a _magister_ , even if he keeps trying to dodge the title. Broody was the slave of a _magister_ who seems to have thought of torture as a hobby and blood magic as a pleasant way to pass the time on a rainy day. Or a sunny day. Or any day. Sparkler would like to reform the Magisterium. Broody would burn it down and salt the earth." Varric heaves a giant sigh. "Just finish your letter. I'll pack. If I can't _stop_ the inevitable explosion, I will at least have a front row seat."

* * *

The first Dorian knows of Varric's arrival is a voice saying, "Geez, Sparkler, you look _awful_."

It has not, admittedly, been the best week. In preparation for the attack on Vol Dorma itself, it was necessary to take out Magister Ossis first.

He was not, unfortunately, nearly as stupid as Brocchus had been. There had been casualties. That's not to say they haven't lost people before, but this time-- Ossis had outsmarted him there. Not for long, and not enough for the man to live, but those losses? They were on Dorian's head and he knew it. One of them had been one of Gize's men. Then there'd been Kir, the farmer's boy-- sixteen, seventeen perhaps, his family's blood red on Venatori hands and Marcus had said _at least we can give him armour, training, a chance_. Not enough of one. And Thea, the doe-eyed southern apostate who had run from Templars straight into the hands of Venatori slavers and then basically _imprinted_ on Ismene like a duckling on its mother, insisting on helping even though under better circumstances Dorian wouldn't have let her within a mile of the front lines.

_Shouldn't_ have let her within a mile of the front lines.

The worst is the way nobody will blame Dorian to his face. So instead he turns himself in circles trying to figure out where he went wrong, how he could have stopped it, what he will do next time to make it not happen. If he didn't insist on being so flashy, if he'd focused on taking out Ossis quicker, if he'd gotten back to the main force sooner--

So when he hears Varric's voice, it takes him a moment longer than it should to respond. "You couldn't at least open with _long time, no see_?"

Varric gives him a look. "Maker, when was the last time you slept?"

A full night? Sometime before Ossis. He's not telling Varric that, though. "Have you met Marcus Aclassi yet? I think you two would get along swimmingly."

"Yes." Varric says. "He said if you were taking a nap and I woke you up that he would tie my intestines in a knot. Nice guy." He holds out a letter. "As much as I'm not sure I want to put more on your shoulders, Evelyn sent this. Information, and a request."

He scans the letter quickly. It's actually very timely-- while the business with Ossis has left a bad taste in his mouth, it also should have left the Venatori in that area somewhat in disarray, and now, before they have time to recoup, would be a good time to strike. "This is very useful. I'll make it a top priority."

Varric looks like he's about to say something else, but Avis interrupts him by barging through the doors. Back safely from his mission, then, and Dorian opens his mouth to ask how it went when Avis snaps, "It went fine. That's not why I'm here. Marcus tells me you're still being a dumb shit."

Dorian sighs. Nobody seems to understand. He can't sleep right now, and as long as he can't sleep he might as well be working. If he's can't stomach the sight of his dinner, there's always somebody else who can take his share. He'll cope. He'll cope, and he'll be better next time. "I am trying to--"

He honestly doesn't see it coming. Drusa can move in shadows, soft and slow, and kill a man who never sees her coming with a touch so light he doesn't even know he's dead. Avis, on the other hand, is speed, a blur with violence at the other end of it. _He just slapped me_ , filters through Dorian's mind, followed by _I don't think anybody's actually just slapped me. I thought that only happened in books._ "It wasn't your fault, you idiot. Nobody thinks that but you. Eat, get some rest, and then make bad guys go boom, because if you keep up with this soppy martyr shit I really am going to have to gut you."

Ah, Avis' own brand of violent, foul-mouthed concern. Oddly more comforting than actual comforting. "I-- suppose I could discuss things with Varric over dinner." Dorian says. "Speaking of which, Avis, would you like to kill some slavers?"

Avis' gaze flicks over to Varric (who is just standing there looking vaguely amused at the situation) and back again. "You say the sweetest things, Pavus."

He doesn't think about it until they're all sitting around a pot of something warm and spicy, courtesy of Drusa which means it's tasty and he's not going to ask what's in it (she calls it 'resourceful'; Dorian does not think those lizards which climb on walls should be counted as 'resource'). Then Gize settles down with a grin and asks Varric if he's got any good stories about Dorian's time in the Inquisition, although she phrases it in a way that goes along the lines of 'has he always been this weird?'.

"I am not _weird_." he protests.

Varric leans forward. "Sparkler, on your very first official mission with the Inquisitor you got hurtled forward in time to Red-Lyrium Nightmare World. I think that counts."

"That wasn't even my _fault_."

" _This_ I want to hear." Ismene says, and they all crowd around to hear Varric give a rather inaccurate account of the whole thing-- he doesn't even remember the future!-- and ignore Dorian's protests about the bits he's getting wrong entirely.

* * *

Varric doesn't seem sure that Dorian should actually be involved in the entire business with Fenris. "Nothing personal, Sparkler. He's not as bad about mages as he was when I met him, but I think the whole Magister Pavus thing--"

" _Technically_ not ratified, also please don't ever call me that again--"

"--might be something of a stumbling block." Varric finishes up. "Meaning, while he _probably_ won't rip out your spleen, he won't be very happy about fighting alongside you."

"All the more reason to go in person. Actions do speak louder than words."

"Especially if the action is splattering Venatori all over the walls?" Ismene asks, with a smile. Beside her, Drusa just does her 'magic hands' gesture and mouths an exaggerated _Boooooom_.

Varric just shakes his head. "Have it your way, Sparkler."

He ends up travelling with Gize, Avis and Ismene, as well as some of Gize's men for backup; Drusa and Marcus are in the midst of planning for Vol Dorma, which is to say ferreting out secret routes past the city walls and working out how best to make use of them, respectively. Fenris is waiting for them at a watchtower just south of the Venatori camps, having been directed to meet up with some of Dorian's scouts.

One of the scouts salutes (honestly, he's trying to stop them doing that, it makes him want to look behind him to see where Evelyn is). Fenris-- because Dorian is sure there can't be two white-haired lyrium-tattooed elves in Thedas-- gives him a look so sour it could curdle seawater. Varric steps forward, hands up, and there's a brief, whispered conversation between the two of them before Fenris comes forward. "I suppose, under the circumstances, we will have to work together." It is perhaps the most grudging tone of voice Dorian has ever heard, and he's heard Vivienne when she's feeling obliged to thank Cole for his aid in battle, unwanted or not.

He ducks his head in a light bow. "Your information came to us just at the right moment, as it happens. With Magister Ossis dead--" Fenris is giving him a look that says _I hate talky mages even more than regular mages_. "Gize, perhaps you would like to run through the plan?"

Gize does, with her usual deft commands, her second adding his opinion where necessary. Dorian supposes it's a mercenary captain thing; the good ones, like Gize and Bull, have a way of evaluating the situation and getting straight to the point. They're used to leading from the front.

He trusts Gize when it comes to battle strategy, so when she basically hands him marching orders, he merely nods, committing to memory who will be doing what, what to look out for. Mentally rationing his mana, thinking through how many lyrium potions he has, how many he should keep in reserve in case of unexpected reinforcements, or in case Ismene needs one of his.

"You take orders from a Qunari?" Fenris asks, raising an eyebrow.

Avis starts cackling. "Oh, where to _start_."

"Do _not_ start." Ismene tells him. "It's bad enough that I heard them at it last time. I do not need further details."

"I do." Varric says. "It will add verisimilitude to my next novel."

Avis wrinkles his brow. "Add _what_?"

"More accurate sex scenes."

It's a very successful mission, in terms of numbers of Venatori killed and the number of formerly enslaved elves who manage to avoid the apparently quite natural temptation to gut him. In terms of embarrassing stories about him shared between Varric and Avis, and the number of times Gize manages to work _Broken Ocean_ quotes into the conversation-- well, the less said the better.

Now, of only he could convince _Varric_ of that.

* * *

Fenris: So, this magister of yours...  
Avis: Whoah. Not mine. I don't have no magister. You mean Pavus?  
Fenris: You trust him?  
Avis: As much as I can. He's an idiot sometimes but he's trying to help.  
Fenris: You sound very sure of that. Because he freed you?  
Avis: I freed _myself_. Pavus just handed me the knife. Look, you want to talk about how shit humans are, or how tall qunari are, or, oh my goodness, isn't the ocean big and wet, then do it on your own time. Those slavers aren't going to gut themselves.  
Fenris: ...fair enough.

Varric: This is a little weird for me, you know.  
Dorian: Anything in particular?  
Varric: Just... seeing Fenris glower at a mage while we disembowel slavers and bandits brings back memories. That's all.  
Dorian: Good memories?  
Varric: The sort that make me glad Cole is back in Skyhold.  
Dorian: Ah.  
Varric: But you're not an abomination, so, you know. Good on you.

Dorian: I suppose it's my turn to cook.  
Gize: How about _I_ cook, and you take my turn at watch.  
Dorian: I can cook. I'm not that much of a spoiled brat.  
Ismene: It's more the part where you insist on using magic. The food is not an enemy. It doesn't need to be defeated. It has surrendered. Spare it your wrath.  
Avis: Although... if you made a whole pig go _boom_ , would it turn into bacon?  
Ismene: Magic doesn't work that way, Avis.  
Avis: You can bring down a rage demon, but you can't make me bacon? This is why mages are shit.  
Fenris: ...  
Varric: Right there with you on this one, Broody.

Fenris: Mage.  
Ismene: Couldn't you at least go with 'girl mage', or 'the less posh one'?  
Avis: Or 'Krem's little buttercup'.  
Ismene: _Avis_.  
Avis: Yes, Krem's little buttercup? What is it, Krem's little buttercup?  
Ismene: *frustrated noise*  
Fenris: ...never mind.

Fenris: Magister.  
Dorian: I refuse to answer to that. Since I know you don't like me, 'Mage', or 'You' will be fine.  
Fenris: Or _cinaede_.  
Dorian: Not even original, and also, still preferable to _Magister_ , all things considered.  
Fenris: ...

Dorian: Thank you.  
Fenris: For what.  
Dorian: Oh, did I merely imagine you cutting down that rather nasty looking fellow who was heading straight for me?  
Fenris: If I did, it was only because he was in my way. Don't flatter yourself.  
Dorian: Well, thank you anyway.  
Fenris: ...

Varric: You're warming up to him. I can tell.  
Fenris: He seems to be determined to make a mockery of everything he's supposed to stand for. I suppose I can respect that.  
Varric: Well, that's progress. Next you'll actually be calling him something other than 'mage'.  
Fenris: Don't push your luck, dwarf.  
Varric: I'll let you borrow 'Sparkler'. Try it out. It just rolls off the tongue.

Dorian: _Vale_ , Fenris. Best of luck on your search for Hawke.  
Fenris: _Vale_... Pavus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tevene/Latin phrases:  
>  _cinaede_ an insult similar to 'sodomite'. (Fenris is just trying to see if he can get a rise out of Dorian; in Minrathous an elf calling a Magister something like that would probably be suicidal).  
>  _vale_ farewell


	7. Pavus

Being on the border with the Anderfels, Vol Dorma was traditionally a garrison town. Its defenses have been poorly maintained over the years, but Marcus is seeing to that. He has plenty of help, as people are still turning up.

It is no Skyhold, certainly, but it slowly is becoming something like home. Perhaps it's partly the way the Chargers have made themselves a semi-permanent feature of the tavern, despite the way Bull is also very careful not to be seen to be exerting 'influence' on him. There is a surprising amount of acceptance, or at least apathy, among the residents of Vol Dorma about Bull's presence (that is, in his bed - Qunari mercenaries more generally are ten a penny in Tevinter). Maybe the Soperati are less concerned about preserving the purity of magical bloodlines and all that rot.

Which is not to say that there are no problems. This is Tevinter, after all - put half a dozen people in a room together and you'll get a dozen opinions on any given topic. The attitudes of a few of the mages have been particularly problematic, and some of Marcus' men, bolstered by seeing Dorian treat their commander as an equal, have started throwing some attitude back. That's to say nothing of the freed slaves, who tend to fall into broadly two camps - those who just want someone to point them to some work to do and a place to lay their head at night, and those who hang about with Avis, basically. There have been fights. He suspects Marcus and Gize have been keeping the worse of it from him. Most of all, he supposes, quite a lot of the population of Vol Dorma and the surrounding area are just quietly keeping their heads down, hoping it's another feud between magisters that will end without too many of them caught up in the crossfire.

While _most_ people in the area were beyond fed up with the Venatori and glad to see the back of them, rebellion against Minrathous, ending slavery-- these are not so universally accepted. Dorian is staring at a letter-- a letter that basically is a demand for compensation for 'lost property'. It's not the only one that's been sent here. 

What the blighted hells is he meant to do about that? Other than his gut response which is to set things on fire, starting with the letter and moving swiftly on to the person who sent it.

He's in over his head. Marcus handles the military strategy side of things, but what he really needs is someone trustworthy to deal with the parts that involve _not_ killing things. As it turns out, he's not sure he's as good at that as he thought he was. Arcane research and forbidden mysteries, count him in. Concerns about taxation, how to fairly compensate residents whose homes were damaged in the takeover of Vol Dorma, ensuring there's enough food laid in for winter, that business with the damn sewer maintenance... _Venhedis_ , can't they just point him in the direction of some demons to kill?

Unbidden, a thought of Rilienus bubbles to the surface of his mind. The only man he'd ever known to use the phrase _an interesting point of contract law_ in all seriousness. He'd probably revel in all this nonsense.

You know, if he wasn't too busy with his _wife_ \-- presuming the marriage _did_ go ahead while Dorian was too busy in the South to keep up with the gossip. Ugh. He doesn't know why he still insists on dragging old hurts up and raking them over looking for something new that isn't there and will never be. He can pinpoint the moment, a sticky-warm Qarinus summer night, Rilienus and him getting progressively drunker over arguments about foreign policy. Dorian had leant in, he remembers that. Rilienus had paused, lips half-parted. Dorian had nearly said something too damn truthful, right there and then.

What he doesn't remember is which one of them turned away first.

He does remember waking up with a hangover to find that he'd missed Rilienus' early morning departure, his mother's lips pursed, you _knew_ he had to take the early sailing, followed by some nonsense about Rilienus' cousin (pretty girl, well-bred, _fourteen_ ) that Dorian had immediately tuned out.

He does remember, some weeks later, his mother again, looking over a letter, announcing that Juniva had managed to find a husband for her youngest. "The Pacenti boy, Dorian's friend, you know-- he could have done better, but the Pacenti never did have much _ambition_ , did they? Didn't he tell you, Dorian?"

And his father, glaring over the rim of another letter, "Maybe he didn't tell Dorian because he knows he has no interest in marriage, _apparently_."

"Maybe he didn't tell me because he didn't know. Maybe his father also selects wives like he's picking a breeding _bitch_ for a hunting dog."

"At least Magister Pacenti has a son who knows his duty!"

His mother simply sipping her tea, pretending it's not happening. "Well, I hope they send an invitation to the engagement party. I've been wanting an excuse to have something new made up."

"What are you woolgathering about?"

The last is Bull, hovering over Dorian. He blinks, sighs. "Burned bridges." He never had asked Rilienus if the timing had just been coincidence, if he'd gone home and his father had presented him with the girl and Rilienus always _had_ been much better than Dorian about being the good son. Instead, they'd barely spoken for months, and then it had been in passing at other people's parties, something a little distant and awkward between them. No arguments, merely drifting apart. Still friends, but anything that might have been more was gone.

He holds no illusions on that last point, but it was always something of a regret, which is probably why Cole picked up on it. He's very good at pointing out when you're not nearly as over something as you think you are.

Bull pulls him close, very gently, hand stroking his back-- calming, yes, but he's so annoying when he's being perceptive. "Literal or metaphorical bridges?"

"Metaphorical, but very thoroughly burned all the same." Suddenly he realises why Bull has come to see him. "And you're about to leave."

"Should be about three, four days. Venatori _and_ wyverns? You give me all the sweetest jobs. People will talk."

"Talk, sing tavern songs, paint elaborate frescoes on the back wall of the tavern..." Drusa had some surprising hidden talents. "I'm sorry; you're barely here lately and then when you are I still spend all my time holed up dealing with this nonsense."

Bull kisses him very gently, on the forehead. "You're busy overthrowing a country. Which, by the way, is pretty damn hot. The whole 'rebel leader' thing? Really working for me. Besides, I'm keeping occupied. Making good with the in-laws."

Exactly who he is referring to by the last is obvious. "Marcus is _not_ my father."

"You told him that? Because I feel like I finally understand father-in-law jokes." Bull chuckles, low and rumbling. "If it makes you feel any better, he's also been giving Krem a hard time about Ismene. The word _intentions_ featured quite heavily."

Dorian laughs, because he can imagine it. "Why was I not there?"

"Ask Gize and Avis, they've been doing re-enactments. Drusa plays Ismene." Bull gives him another kiss, this one not on the forehead and not nearly as gentle. "I really have to go. Stop being tempting."

"Stop asking the impossible," Dorian tells him. "This is just my natural allure. I can't help it."

* * *

When Bull goes (maybe _slightly_ delayed), Dorian finds himself in endless meetings, trying to wrangle everyone into some kind of order, secretly wishing that he'd gone with the Chargers to deal with the Venatori and their pet wyverns. Or that a dragon would attack. Any problem he can solve by throwing a lot of magic at it would do, really.

Marcus and Gize assist with the meetings-- Marcus by being someone Dorian can defer to on matters of military strategy, and Gize primarily by looking imposing, but also having a good eye for when somebody is lying. He supposes you don't lead a mercenary band without having some feeling for when somebody's trying to cheat you.

Ismene and Avis have gone north, with a few scouts and some soldiers who fall into the _fast and deadly_ category, to see what's happening along the Imperial Highway. Quite a lot of it is unsettled ground - a lot of orchards and vineyards, the occasional estate house, and a few villages. As much as possible, he tries to make sure that ordinary villagers are left alone if they so wish-- but that summer estates and the like, merchant caravans and anyone holding slaves should be raided freely. This, at least, he knows is quite a popular edict in that no few of those who have gathered take some joy at trashing some Magister's property, and that while he asks that weaponry and armor, anything magical or information of potential significance come to him or Marcus for distribution to the troops, small trinkets he allows to go to whoever finds them (Drusa is getting quite the collection).

That leaves Drusa, who appears in his quarters while he is sulking between meetings with a bottle of something with an elaborately gilt label on it. "Hey Pavus. Scavenged you something nearly as posh as you. Papa says to come take a break and have a drink-- I'm heading out in the morning, remember? Give me a proper send-off."

" _Papa_?"

"He _is_ , and you know it. Go with it." Drusa grins. "Personally, I kind of like it. Never been fussed over before. He _tucked me in_ the other night. That's a real thing. Did you know that was a real thing? I'm going to ask for a bedtime story, next."

Drusa never speaks much about her childhood; Dorian bites his tongue on this one. "That vintage is _entirely_ overrated and whoever you stole it from deserves it for actually spending money on the damn stuff."

"That's Pavus for _let's have a drink_ , right?"

* * *

The next morning, Marcus brings him something for the hangover and yet another list of status updates, and the inevitable morale-raising talk. "We're doing fine, Pavus. Even without a big scary hole in the sky to rally around. Our people-- they believe in this."

"In a better, fairer Tevinter?" Dorian's only half sure he still believes, himself. Tilani is giving him what support she can from Minrathous, but he knows what the talk is. The Senate have stopped arguing among themselves long enough to rally against him, and that means war. There's no outcome of that that doesn't involve blood. They have plans-- that's why Ismene and Avis to the north, Drusa checking east, Tilani's spies in Minrathous-- which regiment they'll move first, who will be in charge. Still-- by any calculation he makes, by any plans he concocts-- a lot of good people will be dead before this is over.

Marcus shrugs. "I would say, in a crazy Altus who makes shit go boom and cries over Soperati dead even though he practices fucking _necromancy_ and ought to be just raising them up and making the poor sods die for him twice. In the right to bleed as brothers-in-arms and not be _bled_ at another's whim. In being all that we can, not merely as much as our betters allow us to be."

Marcus looks at him sometimes like he's seeing someone or something else. Sometimes it's the son he lost, perhaps - a story Dorian only knows in part, and he's not sure he's brave enough to ask for the whole. That's actually _easier_ to deal with than the other. "I'm not sure where to start with that. Possibly by objecting to _crazy_."

"I asked you to take on a city's worth of Magisters and you agreed. Stop objecting." Marcus grins. "Besides, everyone knows that all proper Altus mages are crazy. Ask any Soperati and they'll tell you that all mages are eccentric at _best_ , howling at the moon mad at worst. That your particular brand of weirdness takes the form of taking on an entire country for them? Just part of your charm."

"My charm is _supposed_ to involve my wry wit and classically handsome profile, you realise."

"We're not putting up statues of you just yet, Pavus. Save it for your young man."

Dorian just rolls his eyes, and doesn't say _yes, papa_.

* * *

Gize brings letters - another from Mae which contains the phrase _Is this you trying to protect me, my dear boy? Please stop being ridiculous._ and one from Varric, passed on by a dwarven merchant, which mostly goes on about those fifteen royals Dorian doesn't even owe.

While she's running through a list of mercenary groups who might be worth hiring, ranked by potential usefulness and reliability, the door swings open and somebody yells "You will perish by my hand, foul treasonous--" which is as far as he gets. Really, they should try sticking to _Die, traitor!_ or, you know, just maybe try without the warning? How did somebody so idiotic even get as far as this room?

Also, he needs to take the time to work on a version of that spell that doesn't _splash_ so much. "Kaffas! I like these boots." Gize coughs lightly, and he glares. "Do _not_ say it."

" _Like a child surprised again, that each berry stains lips the same red_." Gize quotes instead, and when he curses at her grins and adds, "Also, stop making them go boom, then."

Dorian welcomes the messenger (he knocks) that interrupts at that point. Even more so that he says they've sighted Ismene and Avis' group returning, signals say no casualties, one captive.

Good to hear no casualties. Dorian doesn't think overlong on the matter of the captive. A merchant, a spy, a noble trying to sneak into his turf to rescue valuables from an estate, someone of that sort. Probably not Venatori-- Avis struggles with the part where he's supposed to keep them alive until they talk, sometimes. "Gize, would you?"

She heads downstairs to wait for the others. Dorian pours himself a glass of wine, and leaves it on the edge of the map table while he goes to fetch his second-favourite boots. Let Gize decide what to do with whatever poor sod Avis and Ismene are hauling in-- he still has to figure out what they're going to do about that _mess_ on the eastern perimeter. He hopes whatever news Drusa comes back with is good.


	8. Rilienus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Cole: Rilienus, skin tan like fine whiskey, cheekbones shaded, lips curl when he smiles._  
>  Cole: He would have said yes.  
> Dorian: I'll... thank you not to do that again, please.   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the same Rilienus as my other one. Still a ridiculous magenerd, though.

Rilienus last sees Dorian at a costume party in Minrathous. Never one to know when enough is too much, he turns up dressed as an Orlesian circle mage, frills and feathers (peacock of course), ridiculous mask and equally ridiculous fake Orlesian accent. He also spends about half the night making off-colour jokes with another friend of theirs, dressed as a Ferelden barbarian, all fur and grunting. "Ooh la la, smite me harder, you brute." he trills, and everyone laughs. Even in this company, it cuts close to the bounds of what is acceptable, but that's Dorian all over.

Foolish. Or brave. Rilienus thought he could be brave, once, but Dorian never asked.

The next thing is, Dorian simply disappears. Back home, is what everyone says at first. House business. Sorting out things with Livia, how long do you think it took Magister Pavus to find Dorian a wife prettier than he is, anyway? Rilienus, whose own wedding is three months away - maybe two, now, he can't remember - privately thinks if that was the case then Dorian would have at least said something to him before he left. Or at least, and probably more likely, made a joke out of it and then gotten very drunk.

House Pavus send their regrets in response to the wedding invitation, and a very expensive and perfectly appropriate bottle of wine as a wedding gift. There is no personal message. The vintage is one that Rilienus knows Dorian considers entirely overrated and at the back of his mind puzzles over it. Is it a joke? A subtle, calculated message?

The rumours start to circulate in Minrathous not long after. They range from the entirely possible to the ridiculous - there's a lot more speculation about what's going on in the South than there is actual information. Personally Rilienus would like to believe the one that says Dorian is just holed up in an Orlesian bar somewhere, laughing at them all. He knows Dorian. Not as well as he did when they were younger, perhaps, but all the same. He's sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, beautiful and well aware of it; his hobbies are arguing about magical theory and holding scandalous political opinions; he duels as if he's dancing, and still manages to beat Rilienus nine times out of ten.

Rilienus tries to imagine him in the middle of a war, and can't. He doesn't really have time to dwell on it. His father considers the whole business "a southern thing", mostly useful for keeping those Venatori shits too busy setting southerners on fire to interfere with Tevinter politics (a direct quote). By politics he means specifically his latest pet piece of legislation, which Rilienus is helping him draft. Good practice for when he takes over his father's seat. It's a dull thing to find he has a talent for, but there you have it. Rilineus is a dull man these days; married, a child on the way, handling the family investments and staying up all night with a stack of documents rather than dancing in dark bars in the rougher parts of Minrathous and trying to keep his eyes off the hands that Dorian lets other men put on him.

Those are all good excuses to be too busy go out to drink and listen to rumours that get nastier every time he hears them (A Qunari? _Really?_ ).

* * *

For a time, he hears nothing more. The matter in the south is settled, it seems. In Tevinter, the Venatori have lost much of their support, with the Magisters who had been involved pulling away and making sure to make loud noises about how they'd always disapproved of the cult. There are still some around, mostly down south near the borders, apparently, but small enough and far enough away that nobody in Minrathous cares.

The Inquisition, too, is a southern matter; something to keep your eye on, nothing to get that worried about. The Minrathous gossip circuit is a fickle, ever-moving thing. There are always new scandals to discuss, and one wayward Magister's son is, it seems, soon forgotten. At least, by everybody else.

Rilienus had thought he'd put this all behind him. Summer nights drinking wine and talking politics, wild plans and high-minded ideals. Perhaps _put_ is the wrong word; it suggests wilful intent. Inch by inch, he's let 'family' and 'duty' take over him, and here is his reward; in line for his father's seat, a lovely wife and son-- granted, mostly staying in Vyranthim with his mother in law these days since his wife 'finds the Minrathous climate difficult'. She _means_ she has absolutely no intent of continuing to share his bed now their mutual duty to their families is complete-- it is, if anything, a relief.

Then the rumours start up again, different this time. There are stirrings in Vol Dorma. Attacks on the Imperial Highway. Slave rebellions. The cause is the Nevarrans, the Grey Wardens, the Inquisition. Or it's something else. Vol Dorma is nearly a war zone, some say. It's only a few slave uprisings, let the local guard handle it, say others. Rilienus' father mostly complains that all the arguments about what should or shouldn't be done about the situation is leaving less time for _his_ legislation, and that the courier who ferries messages between his father and an old friend in the south-eastern Imperium has doubled his prices under the grounds that the section of the Imperial Highway near Vol Dorma is unsafe for travel.

The rumours start calling it the 'Reformation'. Over dinner one day, his father says "They say your old friend is involved in that business. Pavus made a face I've never seen on a man not being asphyxiated." He chuckles, because Magister Pavus is the sort of man his father dismisses as a 'country conservative'. "Tilani is enjoying herself, of course. She told Caius to his face that if the magisters in Vol Dorma had kept their house in order in the first place, and not let the Venatori run riot, it wouldn't have become a target for the Reformation. Ha!"

"It's almost like you approve," his mother says. "Rilienus, dear, talk some sense into your father."

"I am a scholar of the law, not a miracle worker." Rilienus tells her. "Besides, he doesn't approve. He just likes to see the Senate get all riled up."

"Blows some of the dust off!" His father grins. "They've finally agreed to send the army in, though, so that will be that." He sets his drink down on the table with a clunk, a low metallic sound of finality.

Rilienus remembers Dorian with the kohl around his eyes smeared, laughing, and tries to imagine him in the middle of a rebellion, all the military force of Tevinter bearing down on him, and can't.

* * *

Not far off the Imperial Highway, between Minrathous and Vol Dorma, but not so close to Vol Dorma as to be considered dangerous as yet, Rilienus' family have a little country estate. Minrathous born-and-bred, his father rarely visits the place, but Rilienus has fond memories of going there with his mother when he was a youth, the orchards ripe with fruit, being lifted up to grab at hanging treasures, his mother scolding the slave for letting him spoil his dinner (what _had_ the man's name been?).

It is not out of line for Rilienus to go check on his family property, especially with things so dangerous further south. There's a few slaves there, and one or two of his father's Liberati servants in charge of them, just to keep the place clean and in order; it might be best to offer them a chance for safehaven in Minrathous, if it looks like the situation will deteriorate. It's a good reason for making the journey. A good excuse. "Bring back anything good that's left in the cellar." his father says. "I think there might have been a '41."

He takes not his favourite staff, a wedding gift from his parents with a dragon curling around their family emblem, but a plainer dueling staff he hasn't used in years. Plain travelling clothes, hooded. His money carefully concealed. A dun horse with a servant's saddle on it.

He has a feeling this is a journey he does not want to make as a Magister's son.

Unsurprisingly, the information he'd heard in Minrathous was full of lies. As far north as the turning for Asaric, he sees the shell of a merchant's caravan with the wheels torn off. _This close. No wonder the Senate finally agreed to do something about it._ The further south he goes, the more obvious the signs become. The few travelers on the road give him wide berth, for the most part; Rilienus returns the favour. He's cautious to whom he speaks, deliberately muddies his accent when he does so.

The estate, when he reaches it, is empty. Fruit lies rotting on the ground. The inside has been rummaged through, furniture broken or missing, valuables gone. In the room where Rilienus' mother used to take her tea, the one that overlooks the formal gardens (looking decidedly less formal than he remembers them), somebody has scrawled on the wall in black, ragged letters:

_ALL MEN BLEED THE SAME. WE WILL NO LONGER BE BLED._

The cellar is intact, thanks to the lock that takes both magic and the right key to open. There is, indeed, a '41. Rilienus takes it without hesitation, and continues south.

He makes it most of the way to Vol Dorma before somebody appears from nowhere (literally, he swears, no warning) and hits him with a paralysis spell. He remembers the horse rearing, the pain of hitting the ground, and then a close-up view of a fairly disgruntled looking Elf. Then, darkness.

* * *

"...and then he said, no, wait, Varric told me this story about an Antivan Crow. If the assassin is pretty, try not to kill him outright."

A woman's voice, unfamiliar, then laughter. Rilienus shifts, feeling rope around his wrists then stills when he hears the sharp sound of metal. "Hi." It's the elf-- a man, he realises, slender but wearing well-fitted armour. The sound was one of two wicked looking daggers. "I am faster than you. I will kill you if I have to. Thought we could get that out of the way first."

The floor is rocking beneath him - some sort of caravan? Another figure shifts in the corner. A human woman this time. The one who spoke? A staff across her back. "Don't mind Avis. He has unresolved anger issues which lead to him liking stabbity. So, who are you? Other than some sort of really terrible spy. Or a really good spy pretending to be a really terrible spy. Lie and Avis will put holes in your parts until you start telling the truth."

"Rilienus Pacenti." There seems to be little point in attempted subterfuge. Perhaps straightforwardness will work with the sort of people who apparently like 'stabbity'. "I'm looking for a friend. Dorian Pavus."

Avis snickers. "You, and half the assassins in this shitting country."

These people talk about assassins quite a lot. Stereotypes about Minrathous folk aside, this makes Rilienus deeply uncomfortable. "And this?" the woman says, holding up the bottle of wine. How that managed to survive, Rilienus has no idea. It must have all the luck he hasn't.

"A gift for him."

"It's probably poisoned." Avis says. 

Now, _really_ "It's a Marothius '41!" Rilienus blurts out, and then wishes his hands were free so he could slap one over his idiotic mouth.

There's no stabbity. Avis just laughs. "Now I kind of believe he's one of Pavus's."

"You came all this way to give him a bottle of wine?" the woman asks, disbelieving. "You in love with him, or just an idiot?"

"Now, now." Avis says. His eyes sparkle with delight. At least he doesn't look like he's thinking of stabbing Rilienus right now. "The two are, as we have learnt, not mutually exclusive. Let's take him to Pavus. It's fun when we manage to surprise him. The thing with the blueberries made him curse in Qunlat."

"Please don't remind me." the woman responds. "I still have stains in _places_. Agreed, though. Pavus can deal with him. You get that?"

The last, with her voice raised, is presumably addressed to whoever's driving the caravan. "Sure." comes a voice from outside. "We're close now. I can see the flags."

"Ooh, Ismene, you'll have time to make yourself pretty for Krem before the Chargers come back. Tonight, you reckon?"

The rest of the journey is Avis and Ismene bickering over Rilienus's head about Krem (a mercenary, apparently, and Ismene's friend, or _friend_ , depending on which one of them you ask), about card games and old bets. It gives Rilienus quite a bit of time to think, about answers which are probably _was_ and _am_ respectively. About first loves and the inevitability of heartbreak and the ways Minrathous has to grind a man down until he fits into his place.

The central square of Vol Dorma, when Avis yanks Rilienus out of the back of the caravan and into it, is nearly unrecognisable. The plinth where Rilienus recalls a statue of some ancient magister or other is bare; the head of the statue is at the base, the rest, who knows. The buildings are all a little more ragged than he recalls from old summer visits; more fortified. The streets, too; barricades in the streets leading into the square, men standing about in what looks like Imperial armour but with the symbol painted over or scratched through.

Despite that, it's also-- lively? Elves and humans, mages and non-mages; most of them armoured, moving with purpose, but not grim. Nobody looks down. Elves and men alike eye him openly. And-- that's definitely a Qunari. She lumbers over to them as soon as she spots them. "Why do you always find _trouble_?"

"Don't be mean, Gize. I didn't find trouble." Avis answers, immediately. "I found a present for Pavus. And a bottle of wine. Anything fun happen?"

"Assassin. He went boom. Pavus is in a mood because bits got on his boots."

Avis sighs. "Then _stop making them go boom_."

"I did say that." the Qunari says. "He was in a mood before that, too. Something about a letter from that dwarf and a debt of fifteen royals." She shrugs, a slow laconic motion. "You might as well go up. He's between meetings and you know what he's like if you let him get bored."

" _Bears_." Avis says, mystifyingly, with an exaggerated shudder.

Rilienus doesn't precisely resist as Avis guides him up the stairs, because knives, but he does frown to himself. "May I ask something?"

"Haven't gagged you yet."

"Is Dorian... in charge?"

Avis snickers. "You're adorable. He's in charge, and we're in charge of not letting him forget that we're in charge of him being in charge. Except in bed, which... yeah, you'll figure that one out if you're still alive when the Chargers get back. Damn walls are thin."

It has been a great many years since anybody called Rilienus adorable. The rest is just-- as perplexing as everything else has been, including why Rilienus ever thought this was a good idea. And apparently Dorian is sort of in charge of a slave rebellion which has Qunari and stabbity elves in it, and--

\--really? _His_ Dorian? Refuses to use lightning in duels because it messes up his hair Dorian? Fluttering, flirting, Pavus the Peacock, beloved of the fashionable Minrathous party circuit? This isn't, perhaps, a case of mistaken identity?

Stairs, turning, Avis guiding him through a mess of corridors. He feels dizzy, for more reasons than one. Soldiers eye them curiously but say nothing; some nod to Avis in greeting. Finally, there's a door, anonymous, and behind it, a man bent over a map, fingers tracing a path along it.

He doesn't recognise him for a moment. The staff is wrong-- a sharp looking thing, not all Dorian's style, and the robes are well cut but practical, well-worn. The room fits - piles of books, a half-empty glass of wine perched on the edge of the map table. Apart from the roughly circle spatter of half-dried blood in the centre of the room, that is.

"Pavus, you really have to stop making them go boom." Avis says, by way of greeting.

Dorian doesn't look up immediately. "It's a reflex. Can't you all stop nagging me about it and consider it one of my charming quirk-- _Avis_." He's staring, and his voice drops low and dark on the Elf's name.

" _Pavus_." Avis replies, apparently not phased at all. "Scouts tracked him south from the Asaric road. One detour-- empty estate a short way east of the highway. Signaled Ismene and me and we picked him at Fat Cock Rock."

Rilienus is stuck on _tracked him south_ , and nearly misses the last bit. Dorian just sighs. "Didn't we agree you wouldn't name the landmarks anymore?"

"You told me not to and I told you to fuck off." Avis responds, and holds out the bottle of wine. "He was bringing you this."

Dorian takes it. "Poisoned? That's a criminal thing to do to a Marothius."

"It's not-- I just--" Rilienus feels two pairs of eyes on him as he stutters like an idiot. "I thought it might be rude to turn up empty handed."

Dorian mutters something, low and unfamiliar under his breath. "Avis," he says, and this time his voice is as cold as ice. "Do you think you could be a darling and go be elsewhere?"

"Like out of the blast range? Can do." Avis gives a sort of cocky half-salute, and saunters out.

Dorian smiles at Rilienus, thin and tight, and very carefully and deliberately takes the Marothius and places it on a shelf with a few bottles, then turns back.

"So--"

"Are you out of your _fucking mind_ , Rilienus?" The windows don't actually rattle with the force of Dorian's anger, but it feels like they should. "Please tell me you didn't just honestly saunter down the Imperial Highway to bring me some wine like you have a death wish. Why are you _here_?"

"There's a lot of rumours in Minrathous." Rilienus starts.

Dorian rolls his eyes, for a moment looking precisely like he did when he was fifteen. "Like saying there's a lot of water in the sea. Heard any interesting ones? Avis knows a good version of the one where I had an orgy with an entire Qunari mercenary band."

"Not those." Rilienus says, softly. "The ones where you're down here in the middle of this mess. The ones where slave rebellions are just a cover for the southern powers trying to get a foothold in Tevinter. The Senate are sending the _Imperial Army_ , Dorian."

"Yes, yes. I have a friend who has a spymaster who has a friend. I probably know more about it than you do. _Fucking ravens_." He runs a hand through his hair-- there's a tiny scar up by the hairline. "Don't worry, there's a plan."

"The _Army_." Rilienus repeats, because Dorian appears not to be Getting It.

"Those parts of it which won't be left in Minrathous because heavens forbid the Senate ever risk their own asses, tied up in the Eastern Imperium because Qunari, or unavailable because they've already defected to me, you mean." Dorian shrugs. "There are ways to fight a war in which you're technically outnumbered."

Rilienus has nothing to say to that. Dorian speaks as lightly of facing down the Imperial Army as if he's discussing which party to attend, what to wear. _Really, Rilienus, which one of us is supposed to be the Minrathous boy? Your collar-- oh, just come here. Let me at least do something about your hair._

As the silence stretches between them, the doors swing open. "Pavus, we really _have_ to do something about the situation on the eastern perimeter. Now, not when-- oh, for heaven's sakes." The man, a heavy-set Soperati with an axe slung across his back, points at the floor. " _Stop making them go boom_."

Dorian throws his hands up. "You're all such nags. And yes, when Drusa gets back. Unless you want us to go in blind?"

"I was thinking--" the man stops a moment, looks Rilienus up and down. "Who's this?"

"Rilienus, Marcus. Marcus, Rilienus. Marcus is in charge of military operations and of nagging me to eat my greens and go to bed on time. Rilienus is--" Dorian hesitates. "--might be, staying a while."

The words hang in the air between them. Rilienus thinks of a long of history of things unsaid, things that hurt in the past tense. Because he knows they're in the past tense. "You're so terrible at just _asking_."

Dorian's smile is like a sunrise-- warm, beautiful, and utterly out of Rilienus's reach. That's all right.

Dorian asks.

Rilienus says yes.


	9. Peacock & Mouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always good to catch up with an old friend ~~you used to be in love with~~

There's a couch at the back of the office, on which Drusa keeps piling stolen cushions (side note: who loots cushions?). Dorian quickly shoves the one with the weird bloodstain to the back and fetches Rilienus a glass of wine, since he definitely needs a refill on his and this way he he's not drinking alone. 

Well, this is awkward.

Just _seeing_ Rilienus again-- even if it had been in Minrathous-- would always be a little awkward. They know too much about each other, that's the problem. "So, how _is_ Minrathous?"

"Pretty much as it always has been and always will be." He pauses. "Since you're obviously dying to ask, yes, I got married. I-- I have a son."

The last he says muttered to the floor, and frankly it floors Dorian as well, because, well. "What's it like being a father, then?"

Rilienus laughs, low and bitter. "How would I know? My wife took him off to Vyrantium the second she got the chance. The Minrathous air disagrees with her, you see."

Ah, that one's always a classic. "Hates you, does she?"

"Nothing so dramatic." Rilienus sighs. "She finds me dull. Better than the alternative, I suppose."

"Poison in your tea?" He'd always wondered if he would have driven Livia to that, in the end.

But his old friend just shakes his head at him. "Worse. She could actually like me. What would I do with a wife who was in love with me? Can you imagine?"

He looks so _rueful_ at the thought. Dorian can imagine, and the mental image is so-- he doesn't _mean_ to laugh, but Rilienus cannot cope with women unless they're the sort willing to discuss abstract magical theory and who have a deep interest in the linguistics of old Tevene. How many times did Dorian have to 'rescue' him at parties? "Sorry." he says, pulling himself back together.

"Don't apologize. It's a mess of my own making." Rilienus shrugs. "But to change the topic-- how was the South?"

"Cold and barbaric." he says, on reflex, and then pauses. He should probably-- well, it's as good as a time as any. "I met someone, actually. It's a little complicated." Like saying water is a little wet. What with the former Qunari spy part and the fact that neither of them really know what to do with an actual relationship-- well, he supposes they muddle through.

Rilienus stares at him. "You're in _love_."

"What?"

"You absolutely are." Rilienus grins, mood apparently lifted. "It's written all over your face, Peacock. You couldn't be more obvious if you tried."

And here he thought he'd cured himself of getting embarrassed over his love life. "Shut up."

"I'm very happy for you." Rilienus says, smirking at him, and doesn't quite manage to duck the cushion to the face. Dorian is used to rough-housing with people with better reflexes. "Ow! You've picked up southern manners, haven't you. We're all _doomed_."

"Hush, Mouse." Dorian grabs another pillow and waves it at him warningly.

Rilienus holds his hands up. "Truce, truce. No more on our love lives. Tell me about your rebellion."

Dorian does, as well as he can. About five minutes in, he diverts to fetch Rilienus paper and ink, because he can see his hands twitching. By the time Marcus comes back, Drusa trailing behind him, Rilienus has two dozen pages of notes and is muttering something to himself about historical precedents.

Drusa eyes him suspiciously. "Another one? Does he make things go boom, too?"

"Rilienus is much more civilised than I." Dorian tells her. "His specialty is wards, and being horrified at my attitude to paperwork."

"It is one of many things that do not go away if you just _ignore_ it." Rilienus says, and then turns and bows neatly to Marcus and Drusa. "Rilienus Pacenti, at your service."

Marcus returns the gesture with a smile. "Marcus Aclassi."

They leave Rilienus and Marcus in a discussion about the Vol Dorma merchants' guild while Dorian takes Drusa and Gize out east to make things go boom (actually, to secure a potential weak point in their perimeter, but try making Drusa actually say that). By the time they return, Marcus and Rilienus have shifted their discussion to the tavern, with Ismene and Avis hanging about, presumably mostly to poke fun.

"Are you seeing this?" Avis demands, waving his hand at the scene. "You have a really strange way of dealing with captives."

"He's a friend." Dorian tells him. "He's not a bad sort, honest."

"We can see him being _friendly_." Ismene says, rolling her eyes. "And apparently not making things go boom. Sure he's one of yours?"

Drusa slips past all of them to leap on Rilienus, hugging him with a cry of "Are you my new Mama?" for no obvious reason and giggling when he flails, confused, which to be fair is a natural reaction to getting a sudden lapful of Drusa. 

For once, Marcus looks too stunned for action-- possibly Drusa's surreal sense of 'humour' has finally gotten to him, and Dorian has to intervene-- by which he means bribing her off Rilienus' lap with wine and promises of sparkling things. "Play nice, children."

"I will, I will. Don't want Papa getting mad at me." Drusa says.

"Don't even ask." Dorian tells Rilienus, because he can _see_ the question forming, and slips into the space next to him. "Just tell me what we're drinking."

* * *

It's half-decent wine, served with altogether too many embarrassing stories about when Dorian and Rilienus were teenagers. Mostly the embarrassment is on Dorian's part. "This is what the Pacenti do, isn't it." Dorian says, glaring at him as Avis laughs. "You _pretend_ to be all staid and boring, but actually you're just collecting blackmail material on everyone else."

"Father prefers the term 'leveragable information'." Rilienus says, calmly, and then _giggles_ , because he's had just as much wine as everyone else. "Actually you don't need any real information. Just make vague allusions to knowing they're practicing blood magic. Works _all the time_."

"What if they're not practicing blood magic?" Ismene asks.

Dorian and Rilienus both cackle. " _Minrathous_." they say, in unison.

"Creepy." Avis says, with a scowl. "Stop doing that."

"A friend is a mirror, not an echo." Gize comments mildly, and Dorian sighs, because there's no way Rilienus won't recognise that. He doesn't even have to look to see his face light up at the quote.

Luckily, before Gize and Rilienus can get into some sort of _Broken Ocean_ quoting competition, the door swings open with a bang and everyone's attention is distracted by the return of the Chargers. Particularly Ismene, whose hand flits to her hair as she sees Krem (and then back to punch Avis in the arm for his commentary).

Bull saunters in last, and Dorian slips out of his seat and goes to greet him. "Wyverns." Bull says with a grin. "Lots of them. Fucking huge bastards, too."

"You're welcome, dear." Dorian says jokingly, and lets Bull dip him for a light kiss. "You can give me a full report later. At _length_."

"Yes boss." Bull replies, still grinning in a slightly maniacal way, and then, casting his eye over the tavern, "Who's the new guy?"

It is at this point that Dorian remembers he never did quite explain the _Qunari ex-spy mercenary_ part to Rilienus, and when he turns back he sees Rilienus, wide-eyed, and Avis and the girls around him, clearly enjoying explaining the situation in the crudest way possible. Well, at least that solves the question of when, precisely, to bring the topic up.

He sighs again, because it's possible they're about to reach a new peak of awkward, but all Rilienus says when he brings Bull over is "I can't believe _that's_ the rumour that's actually _true_."

"Depends on the version you heard." Bull says, with one of his ridiculous 'winks'.

He did wonder what Rilienus' reaction to Bull would be. It's worse than he feared. They _get along_.

* * *

Rilienus: *stares at Bull*  
Gize: He's a lot of man, isn't he?  
Rilienus: Um. Big. Yes.  
Gize: Pavus can take it. As everyone who has to room in the East Wing can confirm. You're blushing. Visualising it?  
Rilienus: No!  
Avis: He is.  
Drusa: Totally is.  
Ismene: Sweetheart, you clearly need to get laid.  
Marcus: *embarrassed cough*

Bull: So, about this friend of yours--  
Dorian: _No_.  
Bull: Aw, come on, I didn't even ask yet.  
Dorian: Still no.  
Bull: Can't blame a man for trying.  
Dorian: Can, and _will_.

Avis: So why'd you never fuck?  
Rilienus: It's complicated.  
Avis: It's really not. Do you not know how? Aren't there any naughty diagrams in all those books you're always reading?  
Rilienus: _Emotionally_ complicated.  
Avis: That's not even a thing.  
Rilienus: It would have been-- have you ever read Corti's _Deep Waters_ , by any chance?  
Avis: *flat look*  
Rilienus: That's a no?  
Gize: _You are not a nectar I could sip, my love, as fickle as the hummingbird. You are a well and I would drink my full of you; an ocean and I would know your depths_. That part?  
Rilienus: *cough* Good guess.  
Gize: It was either that or that bit at the start of the twelfth stanza, but that seems a bit forward for your tastes.  
Rilienus: Let's talk about something else. Please.

Cole: Spaces, silences between; too many years, too far apart, too much that might have or would have or could have been. He never asked, but neither did I.  
Rilienus: *nearly jumps a foot high*  
Dorian: Oh, hello Cole. I didn't realise you were coming to visit.  
Cole: Your hurts come from the same place as his but they don't meet in the middle.  
Rilienus: Dorian?  
Dorian: Just the Inquisition's friendly spirit of compassion. He's not a bad fellow, apart from the habit of dredging up thoughts that ought to be private and airing them out like a fishwife's dirty laundry. Cole, this is Rilienus.  
Cole: Hello Rilienus. You look different than in Dorian's dreams.  
Dorian: Like _that_.


	10. Lyceus

The Pacentis, as a family, have a reputation for being frightfully dull but scarily efficient. It seems to take Rilienus about a week to learn the names of pretty much every resident of Vol Dorma, as he wanders about without so much as a staff, chatting to people and conjuring goodwill out of thin air.

Dorian spends some time worrying that somebody will attack him, and is mildly gratified at the fact that Marcus seems to agree, assigning bodyguards that Rilienus refuses to take with him, citing some concern about the effect on his work of having a 'military presence' looming behind him.

"Mama's right." Drusa says, "You don't catch flies with big swords, Pavus. I'll find someone."

Ignoring Drusa's nickname for Rilienus for the moment (he _is_ a bit of a mother hen), her choice of bodyguard, a woman as tiny and nearly as magpie-like as Drusa herself, is an excellent one. Satisfied that there is someone sufficiently stab-happy standing between Rilienus and whatever might be lurking in the dark corners of Vol Dorma, he goes back making things go boom (harassing the Tevinter army scouts and reinforcing ambush points along the highway, specifically), and just lets Rilienus get on with it.

"Are you sure Pacenti's a mage?" Avis asks, suspiciously. "He doesn't even make anything go boom. Boring."

"He does good work." Marcus replies, scowling. "They can't all be like Pavus."

Avis and Drusa look at each other and giggle; Dorian doesn't know why, but apparently Marcus and Rilienus getting along is hilarious.

* * *

"So," Rilienus says, "Josephine has sent through a draft of the trade agreement--"

Dorian blinks. "You're in contact with Josephine?"

Rilienus sighs at him. "Never mind. I'll just check it over and make the arrangements."

* * *

Dorian comes back from a week of tracking Venatori through abandoned mines to find a dinner-hall full of Nevarrans. This isn't, in itself, objectionable, and he has a quite enjoyable discussion over dinner with a spirited young lady over the finer points of necromancy. 

"That went very well." Rilienus says, after dinner, looking pleased with himself. "We'll do the formal signing tomorrow."

"Did you just arrange an alliance with the Nevarrans?"

"Technically, you did, which is why I need you to be there tomorrow." Rilienus says. "Also, yes, I did tell you, and you sort of waved a hand at me and told me to just get on with it and not bother you with the boring bits. Since everyone presumes we're allying with the southern powers anyway, it might as well be true. Also, _technically_ , it's not a new treaty, it's a re-establishment of a lapsed agreement between the Nevarrans and the Reformation movement as established by Caius Orentius--"

"That was _hundreds_ of years ago. And wasn't he assassinated in some horrible way? A snake in a box, or something?"

"Oh, that's a common misunderstanding which arises from a mistranslation of the old Tevene. Vol Dorma dialect can be tricky to interpret, to be fair. Additional sources make it clear that it was a pretty standard poisoning."

"...helpful, Rilienus."

"Sorry. Please don't get assassinated, and please turn up tomorrow to sign things, there are times when I can't get away with forging your signature, and in front of a group of Nevarran delegates is one of those times."

"Yes, yes." Dorian tells him, and is mildly offended but not surprised when it turns out Rilienus has already been talking to Bull behind his back to make sure Dorian turns up in the morning mostly awake, not hung-over, and without any interesting bruises (at least, in visible places).

* * *

After the Nevarrans finally leave, it is back to business. Marcus has found out who is at the head of the army marching South; Magister Lyceus.

That's unfortunate. He has a reputation for being competent, a Laetan who earned his seat through service in Seheron. Dorian has seen him duel, years ago, a public, showy event in Minrathous, but knows little else.

An army does not move quickly; that is the main advantage they have. The disadvantage is that part of the reason it is not moving quickly is that Lyceus is cautious; he will not be easily lured into a trap. Bull runs over what he knows of Lyceus' tactics from Seheron, Marcus what he knows of his reputation within the army, Rilienus through various Minrathous rumors. None of it gives them much assistance. There's no obvious way to avoid a fight, just various ways of limiting the number of casualties.

Half the problem is that the Reformation does not yet have enough soldiers to thoroughly hold their boundaries. Lyceus sends small groups in, here and there, testing their defenses, manages to move some of his men into a long-abandoned watchtower along the Imperial Highway - not a place strong enough to hold for long, but problematic enough that it needs to be dealt with swiftly.

Dorian decides to see to it himself, and heads out with Avis, Ismene, and Bull, the Chargers, some of Marcus' best men, and a couple of Nevarrans who have remained behind to help and who are certainly not Templars, because golly-gosh, foreign Templars in Tevinter, that would be scandalous. (Good thing they've got their lyrium supplies sorted).

It's oddly nostalgic; he hasn't fought alongside Bull like this in a while.

At first, everything seems to be going to plan. Then, just as he's thinking _isn't this a little too easy_?, it turns out he's right.

"Ambush!" one of Marcus' soldiers cries out, before he falls, arrow in the throat, and then Dorian doesn't have time to do anything but fight. They exchange bursts of arrows and magic, the heavy-hitters moving forward to engage the enemy at close-quarters. It's easy to fall into his old habits; lightning, fear and fire to keep them off-balance, weakened, line them up and let Bull make the kill.

Slowly, but surely, they begin to gain the upper hand. The Nevarran 'warriors' have tricks up their sleeves that Tevinter mages don't know how to fight; it is not the cleanest battle he has ever fought, but they _are_ winning. Finally, he stands among the dead, counting how many of them are his, and with his mana as low as it is lets his barrier fade.

It's at that moment, and just a moment too late to put a barrier back up, that he sees the movement in the corner of his eye. He has enough time to realise _assassin_ , and that this one isn't giving him any advance warning.

Bull is faster. There's a flash of red, and a crack that at the back of his mind he identifies as somebody's spine giving way, and then there's just Bull. Dorian is fixated on the jagged slice through Bull's arm, and doesn't realise for a moment why Bull drags his thumb over it and then sucks it clean. "Just Colchicum. No worries, it doesn't do much to Qunari."

" _No worries_?" Dorian echoes, disbelieving. Across the way, he can see Avis picking through the dead, Krem hovering over Ismene as she drinks a lyrium potion.

Bull shrugs, devastatingly casual. "Front-line bodyguard, remember?"

He can't answer. He assists in making sure the dead are given their proper rites, instead, or at least an abbreviated version of same. Bull lets Stitches wrap his arm and then helps with making sure the watchtower won't be reoccupied - specifically, digging some holes for Rocky to pack something into, undermining the foundations. If they can't hold this position-- and there's no way they can spare the soldiers or establish the supply lines it would take-- the best they can do is make sure Lyceus can't either.

"You're moody again." Avis tells him, on the way back. "Are you upset that a dwarf can make things go boom, too?"

"Leave it, Avis." Ismene says, low and quiet, and wonder of wonders, Avis does.

Bull is resting, Stitches looking over him; he said Colchicum didn't do _much_ to Qunari but Dorian hardly trusts that. It might not kill him, but he can see the way Bull was moving, just a little more sluggish than usual. Painful, perhaps; it is not a poison you choose to give your enemies a merciful death.

The assassin must have been waiting for him; not in the battle, just waiting for him to drop his guard. It was a trap. Lyceus was _drawing him out_ , and like an idiot, Dorian fell for it. How many dead? How many wounded? And Bull sleeping off a nasty dose of poison, and he's lucky it's not worse, and all because of _his_ mistake.

He wonders if the other men Lyceus sent knew, that they were just there to provide enough bodies that Dorian would think he'd won.

* * *

He sees Bull safely (complaining all the way) to his quarters in Vol Dorma, leaving Stitches with him, and then corners Rilienus and Marcus (in Rilienus' office, when are they not?) and makes them go over strategy and planning and troop movements until even Rilienus sighs and says, "Dorian, there _is_ such a thing as overplanning. Get some rest."

"If only he'd take his own advice." Marcus jokes, lightly, but Dorian looks again and sees the shadows under Rilienus' eyes ( _mea culpa, mea culpa_ ).

Rilienus sniffs, delicately. "I rest, when I need to."

"Or when it's worth your while?" Marcus says, and Rilienus laughs.

"Precisely. The Pacenti make all decisions based on enlightened self-interest." he replies, putting on the priggish air of one of his maiden aunts, and Dorian blinks, because he has the strange feeling that he's only understanding half of what is being said here.

After a moment, he decides he _is_ too tired to try and wring more sense out of it. "Fine, I'll go to bed."

He detours via the library, just to pick up a few bits of work in case of insomnia, and gets half-way to his rooms before Bull catches up with him, caging him against the wall. "Hey."

"You're supposed to be resting." Dorian informs him. Stitches, for reasons best known to himself, chose to make the bandage for his arm out of a spare pair of Bull's ridiculous pants, and his arm is swaddled in stripes. Dorian doesn't know whether to laugh, cry, or just be glad that there's one less set of those pants in the world.

Bull shrugs. "What, and let you wallow? I've taken hits for you before, Dorian. For every one of Evelyn's merry little band, and for every one of the Chargers, too. It's my job. Why is it different this time?"

He hesitates, trying to put it into words. "It's different because I'm in charge. I gave the order to attack. That makes it my responsibility."

"You think I stepped between you and a poisoned blade because you _gave an order_?" Bull replies instantly. One hand-- the uninjured arm, Dorian mentally notes-- slides around him, pulling him closer. "You really think for a moment that was what was going through my head?"

The look in his eyes-- Dorian feels guilty all over again, for entirely different reasons. "No, I-- I'm sorry. I didn't think."

"Don't apologise." Bull grins. "If you'd like, I can prove to you that I'm entirely fit for duty."

Dorian slaps his good arm, lightly. "Sex-crazed Qunari. You're like one of those horrible novels I certainly never read as a teenager."

Bull laughs, and leans in for a kiss.

It is at this point that there is a cough. Quite a polite one-- Dorian wonders if Rilienus' father actually _taught_ him the polite cough, a technique handed down through generations of Pacenti Magisters. "Pardon me."

Dorian groans, even as Bull laughs against his shoulder. "Rilienus, please just-- be elsewhere."

There is a slight pause. "I am trying to. You're in the corridor. You're in the _way_."

When he looks up, Rilienus is very carefully focusing his eyes on the opposite wall from them, while gesturing vaguely down the hall, in the direction that Dorian supposes he and Bull are technically in the way of. "Pardon us." Bull says, still grinning, and moves out of the way-- well, presses Dorian closer into the wall so Rilienus can scoot past.

For a moment Dorian frowns after him. Rilienus doesn't normally come to this floor, having his rooms on the other side.

Before he can figure it out, though, Bull turns that smile on him and says, "So, I think we were discussing what _orders_ you had for me?"

At which point, where Rilienus was going and what he was doing becomes entirely irrelevant.

* * *

In the morning, they discuss the latest information that has come over night about Lyceus and his troop movements. They can do this, Dorian knows they can, but it's going to be messy. Especially since there are tactics that Dorian simply refuses to use.

He knows the answer, but he has to ask one more time. "There's really _nothing_ we could use to get Lyceus to at least start talking to us?"

"Believe me, I'd prefer that. But he's beholden to Minrathous, and we don't have anything he'd want." Rilienus says, shuffling through his papers. "So unless you've got, oh, a cure for Tranquility up your sleeve, I'm not seeing how we'd get him anywhere near a bargaining table."

Dorian (and probably everyone else in the room previously a member of the Inquisition) sits up like someone's put a lightning spell through his spine. "Sorry." he says, "Could you repeat that?"


	11. Pawn

Rilienus tells them a story of two brothers; two young mages full of hope to do their parents proud; of a Magister's daughter, and a Magister's anger.

"In theory, there are quite strict regulations on the use of the Rite. In practice, it's not hard to acquire an expert opinion or two and a judge who sees things your way." Rilienus says, sad and soft. "Afterwards, Lyceus had nowhere to go but the army. When he returned from Seheron, he had the standing to challenge the man to a duel-- which he won, rather spectacularly as I understand it. So his brother returned to his care, and Magister Lyceus has been quietly funding a number of lines of research into Tranquility for some years. Just, not with any luck."

"There's a reason the information about cure hasn't been spread." Dorian warns him. "It's not straightforward. Mages cured of tranquility don't simply return to who they were before." To put it mildly. He knows they've made some improvement to the cure under Divine Victoria's guidance, but the risks remain.

If it was someone Dorian cared about, though? He'd probably be tempted to take the risk.

"But it's a _start_." Rilienus replies, a familiar brightness in his eyes. Probably thinking of all the research possibilities. "We need to consider which of the Tranquil-- we'd have to convene-- Dieter, perhaps?"

Dorian sighs. "One line of thought at a time, Rilienus."

"We can't be seen to be attempting to reverse Tranquility _haphazardly_." Rilienus says, frowning at his papers. "Or to be using it merely as a way of bribing Lyceus. You need to formally declare the use of the Rite illicit in specific cases. There's a legal framework for that, although it's more often used for relatives to claim compensation after the fact. Dieter was only made Tranquil two years ago, under similar circumstances to Lyceus' brother, and he has relatives still in Vol Dorma who would support any such action."

Marcus nods, tapping his fingers on the table. "We could make it part of the program of assistance offered to those personally harmed by the actions of the former Magisters of Vol Dorma. Compensation, initially, but let the idea of a cure circulate. Lyceus' spies will undoubtedly pick up on it. Especially if he finds out about messages on the subject heading south..."

Krem, standing in for Bull who is supposed to be resting but almost certainly isn't, grins, stretching in his chair. "If you want somebody to get drunk and conveniently loose-tongued about what they're heading back to Skyhold for, I'm sure that can be arranged."

"Dorian, could you draft a request to the Inquisition on the subject?" Rilienus gathers up his papers, as if he's decided the matter is, well, decided. "Lady Nightingale is amusingly flattering on the subject of my little forgeries, but in this case I think it would be better if you actually wrote your letters yourself."

* * *

Rilienus' little courtroom is on the side of the old Vol Dorma courthouse which isn't being used for other purposes _and_ doesn't have any holes in the walls. (Don't blame Dorian; blame the late Magister Sircus for hiding in there and refusing to come out). It is stuffy and hot and Dorian finds it depressing, even when he's not forced to sit in there listening to a series of horrible, horrible stories about the misuse of the Rite of Tranquility.

Mages made Tranquil for attempting to elope with the wrong person's daughter; for demanding from an unwilling Magister their legal right to purchase an enslaved family member; for petty crimes and imagined insults. Laughably obvious manufactured claims of blood-magic or 'instability', run through courts where the judge was some cousin-in-law of the accuser and the evidence provided by Templars taken straight out of somebody's pocket.

Worse is knowing that he's only sitting here now thinking of trying to undo these particular wrongs because it has become strategically important. It feels hypocritical, even though it is true that during a war is probably not the best time to attempt a cure likely to leave the patient suffering from extreme mood-swings and an increased likelihood of demon possession.

That's before he catches Rilienus trying to shuffle out of his sight the case that involves the Tranquil's younger sister and her husband having used his preference for men and unwillingness to marry as proof of 'instability', in the aftermath of a fairly nasty dispute over their father's estate. He has to bite his tongue to stop snapping at Rilienus for being so ridiculous in his attempts to protect Dorian from mere _words_ , as if--

\--he's not heard a word from his father, not even in censure, not even rumours, it's like he's just hoping maybe if he waits long enough maybe Dorian will stop being a disappointment, ugh--

"Hey," Krem says, waiting for him outside. "Chief wants to know if you can come out tonight. We've found out where those bandits that keep harassing our supply lines are holed up, we're going to hit them while they're sleeping. He says we need some magic backup."

Despite the fact that he knows what Bull probably actually said was _Hey Kreme-puff, could you find something Dorian can set on fire?_ , he finds himself smiling. "I suppose I could be persuaded to assist."

* * *

They send the letter down to Skyhold with the next messenger. A few weeks later, as Dorian is looking over courtroom paperwork, trying to see if he can spot which ones he signed and which are Rilienus, he hears a soft noise from behind him and smiles.

"You worry about disappointing them." Cole says. "It's bigger, but better too, brighter. It doesn't mean lies."

Well, that answers the question of what the response from Skyhold was going to be. "Hey, kid." Bull says.

"Hello, The Iron Bull."

At this point there's a polite knock on the door, which of course is Rilienus, accompanying Varric and--

Dorian works his way through every Tevene curse he knows, then a few in Qunlat he's picked up from Bull, then, finally, gives up and reverts to charming southern phrasing, "Maker's _balls_."

"Are you allowed to blaspheme in front of the White Divine?" Rilienus says, curiously, eyeing Cass-- _Divine Victoria_ as if she's a particularly interesting manuscript.

"I am not here _officially_." Divine Victoria points out, looking uncomfortable. "I-- _ugh_ , to be honest, I just wanted to actually _do_ something for once. If I spend any more time just listening to people talk I will go insane."

"I think it's great." Bull says. "Just give her some massive helmet with horns on it, she can blend in with all the Templars you don't officially have."

"If it helps," Rilienus adds, "blasphemy is technically not a crime in Tevinter. As long as you're not plotting to overthrow the Divine-- please don't, that would upset my Father quite a lot."

"Your father is a man of faith?" Divine Victoria asks, curiously.

"Only in things that are signed in triplicate." Rilienus replies. "No, I mean that the Divine owes him quite a lot of money and assassinations would put a dent in the return on his investment. Becoming Divine _is_ rather expensive-- the bribes alone could bankrupt you."

Divine Victoria's only response to this is a rather disgusted noise. Varric chuckles. "Ah, Tevinter. Falling to meet our expectations, every time."

* * *

Rilienus spends the next week in a flurry of hurried but exacting preparation, interspersed with well-meaning questions to Divine Victoria that make Dorian wince and think about warning Rilienus that she can _set his blood on fire_. He's fairly sure that the 'ex-Seeker' part is only theoretical, after all.

He hopes that her disguise as yet another of the Nevarran Templars holds. Nobody's gong to send assassins in after a random Nevarran. At least with Cole hovering near her at all times any would-be attacker will have trouble getting close without being spotted.

It also keeps him occupied and not doing what he did on his last visit, which mostly involved attempting to help him and Rilienus by dragging up past history (and Bull hadn't even had the grace to pretend the thought made him jealous, the impossible lummox).

Dieter is the one they choose for the first attempt, the mostly likely success. Dorian can't see him as the star of a romantic drama, a failed elopement, an angry father, all of that-- he's a little, well, _dull_ -looking, pallid and freckled. What sort of romantic hero has _freckles_? Then again, it's probably for the best that Dieter doesn't typify the Tevinter Romantic Hero, because that doesn't lend itself to emotional stability _or_ happy endings.

That's one side, the actual organisation of the cure. The other is keeping tabs on how many spies Lyceus has about, and what they know, and how to let them know what they need to know without letting them know that it's no accident they stumbled across the information. Publically, of course, there is no cure, and definitely no nice chats with the White Divine, they're merely overturning some old court rulings. Information must be tightly controlled.

The finest of the details about the cure Rilienus keeps locked up in his office under some of those finicky Pacenti wards of his, and Bull and Varric have been having _far_ too much fun concocting rumours to spread about why Dorian has taken an interest in the legal status of the Tranquil all of a sudden.

 _A request from the families_ would make a lot of sense, given how many of the Tranquil in Vol Dorma are from Soperati or Laetan families in the area.

 _Trying to encourage more mages to join the Reformation_ would potentially make sense given the oft-repeated idiocy that focusing on slave rights and mistreatment of the Soperati means he's not interested in the rights of mages (other than, you know, all the enslaved mages in Tevinter, but the sort of people Dorian is fighting don't really think they count, he suspects).

 _It's because one of his old lovers was made Tranquil_ makes him want to throw things, and inevitably that's the one that seems to stick. Of course. Why would Dorian have actual reasons for doing anything that doesn't involve his cock? Sure, let's believe that rumour.

Also, since he can't actually call Bull and Varric out on making up this particular rumour in public, he has to settle for glaring at them in the tavern over a glass of wine and making references to disliking Varric's tawdry romantic fictions. Unfortunately, this has the side-effect of encouraging Gize and the woman who is most definitely not the White Divine to take up the discussion of romantic fiction.

"Where's No-Boom?" Avis asks. "He'll be all upset he missed all this wordy talking about more words."

Dorian isn't sure Rilienus would actually be interested in Varric's works, other than the fact that they are, technically, books. "Still working? Honestly, Marcus, isn't it your job to drag him out of there once the sun goes down?"

Marcus looks up from where he's staring mournfully at his own glass of red. "He said he would be done soon. He had his bodyguard with him, so--"

"The one who's over in the corner in that Grim-fellow's lap?" Drusa asks, tilting her head.

Marcus' brow furrows, and just as he looks like he's about to get up, Cole pipes up with "She couldn't be there. Not when he's playing chess."

"What?" Marcus says; he never seems to sure what to make of Cole. " _Chess_? With who?"

"They're in the shadows." Cole answers. "It's a gambit."

 _Kaffas_. Dorian is vaguely aware of Marcus knocking his chair over as he rises, one step ahead of him, Bull one step behind. _Mouse, you idiot, what have you **done**_.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I left off on a cliff-hanger. Clearly time for random backstory now, right?

Dorian and Rilienus meet when they are ten, while their mothers talk over the top of their heads.

"Did I mention? Our Dorian has been accepted to the Circle of Vyrantium."

"How lovely for you. Personally, I don't know that I could bear to send my son away at such a tender age. Our Rilienus does fare less well under _group_ tuition."

Rilienus, holding himself straight and stiff like a dwarven clockwork doll, inclines his head precisely the right amount to Dorian and then says the most wonderful words. "Would you care to visit the library?"

It's a thing of wonder. The main room, with its great arches and bustling slaves and Tranquil tending to the shelves, is already the size of the Pavus summer-house. Smaller rooms house specialist collections, or more delicate tomes kept safe with spells that chill and dry the air, permitted to be read only by mage-light.

Some of the rooms are warded off; in some cases Rilienus takes down the wards so Dorian can go in and afterwards restores them, a process which looks to involve magic more complex than Dorian has so far been permitted to try without the watchful eyes of his tutor or his father on him. "No staff?"

"Not for these. The wards have to know it's me." Rilienus walks past the next room with a sideways glance at the ward. "We can't go in that one."

"Why not? Is it dangerous?" Dorian hopes the answer is yes. He's been reading the works of a mad Nevarran necromancer who was, supposedly, eaten by his own books after a spell gone wrong. Or maybe they're some of those books enchanted to burn themselves if someone unauthorised reads them. Or, or-- there's so many possibilities, so many terrible, wonderful things and they could well be in here because Rilienus' library is just _great_.

Rilienus pauses. "It's for grown-ups. I'm allowed in when I'm twenty, or married, or can figure out how to remove the ward, whichever comes first."

Now that sounds like a challenge. Dorian stops to eye the ward. How difficult could it be? "Are you allowed _help_?"

"I--" Rilienus calls one of the Tranquil over. "Could you fetch me a copy of my contract book, please?" At one of the central reading tables he flips a giant book open; the later pages are blank, the earlier ones filled with handwriting. "Ah, here."

Dorian squints at it, but it's full of, well, boring stuff. Nothing about fire, nothing about skulls,nothing about _skulls on fire_. Contracts? Is this about summoning things? "Are there good spells in there?"

"It's my contract book. With Father, mostly, although Mother plays too sometimes. We write our agreements down and then if I can find loopholes-- oh, oh, _here_. You're right! It says I can't have someone do it on my behalf, but that doesn't mean I can't have help." Rilienus slams the book closed, looking satisfied, although Dorian's really sure about what. "Want to try?"

They don't actually get the ward open. After a few hours, they're interrupted by a polite cough, which is from a man a little older than Dorian's father in Magister's formal robes. Dorian quietly closes the book he's been using and wonders how much trouble they're in.

"Father." Rilienus says, quickly getting up. "How was the legislature? You promised to tell me how the vote went."

"Nice try." Magister Pacenti says dryly, eyeing them, but he doesn't sound angry, at least. "I believe I said _no help_."

Rilienus sets his jaw. "A verbal contract has no standing in law. The written version only specifies I may not employ another to act on my behalf. Dorian is not acting as my proxy, but my assistant."

Just as Dorian is considering complaining about that one-- he's not an _assistant_ \-- Magister Pacenti smiles. "Good. Now, what if I was to argue that he is neither. This would appear to me to be, in fact, a _joint endeavor_. What then?"

Rilienus frowns. "Um..."

Magister Pacenti signals a Tranquil. "Fetch _Prima Legalis_ , volumes three through six." To Rilienus, he says, "Bedtime reading. You'll have the answer on my desk by the morning."

"Yes, sir."

To Dorian, he adds, "Your mother is looking for you. Rilienus, don't you think your friend would like to borrow a book or two?"

Rilienus nods. "Dorian, you like necromancy, right? Have you read any Mirim?"

"Only his History of Nevarra." Dorian says, suddenly very aware of Magister Pacenti looking him over. Now there's an adult in the room again he has to be good, which is no fun at all. At least borrowing a book will be an excuse to come back and see Rilienus again. And the library.

His mother gives an angry start at seeing his hands full of books (three of Mirim, including one on simulacrum which he saw in the library at the Circle when he went for his test but didn't get a chance to read), but lets it pass without comment. At least, until his father comes home that evening, which she takes as a chance to complain about Lady Pacenti's slights and manner. His father declares her oversensitive and reminds her of the importance of developing good connections while they're in Minrathous, to which she declares him a patronising-- well, some word in old-tongue Dorian doesn't know, something about elves?

He suspects he shouldn't ask. Instead, he retreats to his room, puts up a little barrier that muffles the noise and curls up with one of his borrowed books. It starts out with a story (an _illustrative anecdote_ , Mirim says) about an assassin foiled by a clever necromancer, which is pretty fantastic, although he suspects the most likely use he'll have for a simulacrum at the moment is to make it go sit at dinner so he doesn't have to.

He will start at the Circle in the autumn, a thought equal parts brilliant and terrifying. The summer, though-- the summer he spends with Rilienus and his books, testing out various spells and failing to get into the barred room. Hearing his mother complaining about Lady Pacenti ( _treats me like some commoner just because we're not from Minrathous_ ) and his father about Magister Pacenti ( _one of those Minrathous liberals, doesn't know what it is to fight a war rather than just fund it_ ), and then both of them being sugar-sweet when they know he's listening, encouraging him to make friends with Rilienus, of course he should.

It's one of his favourite memories, that summer in Minrathous. The world was simpler, then.

_Mouse_. He can't even quite remember how the joke started, something in retaliation for Rilienus nicknaming him _Peacock_ , he's sure. That's how it is, perhaps, to know a friend for that long. Even after all the time apart, after all the awkwardness, there are certain certainties.

And one of them is _supposed_ to be that Rilienus doesn't put himself in the line of fire.

Except that now, as he rounds the corner, right on Marcus' heels, there's scattered papers and Rilienus, smear of blood at his temple but _breathing_ , thank the Maker, and he blinks groggily and makes a small noise as Marcus carefully gathers him up, one hand reaching up to press against Marcus' chest. "Well, that didn't entirely go entirely to plan."

"To _plan_?" Marcus says, angrily, echoing Dorian's thoughts precisely.

"They take it?" Bull asks, to which Rilienus nods wearily.

Dorian runs that exchange through his head, and comes up with _vishante kaffas!_ "You _knew_ about this?"

Bull's answer is infuriatingly even-toned. "It was a sound plan. Be angry with me if you will, but there's only so much information you can believably leak through drunken tavern talk."

Marcus makes a noise close to a growl. "So you used Rilienus as _bait_?"

" _Don't_ be angry at him. It was my idea." Rilienus says, muleishly. "Not the getting hit over the head part. Apparently the weak points I've been working into my wards were too _subtle_." The last, slightly annoyed.

Some of Marcus' men arrive, then, having obviously realised something was going on when their boss took a running start out of the tavern, and Marcus sends them to raise an alarm, search for the spy-- not that they're likely to find whoever it is. They've clearly got a good head start. Marcus himself, still holding Rilienus protectively, takes him off to be checked over by a healer, even as Rilienus insists that it's not even a very serious concussion.

That leaves Dorian with Bull. He holds back his anger long enough to make sure that everyone who needs to be informed is, that security is stepped up in the appropriate places. It's near midnight before they make it back to their quarters. Dorian's not sure there's enough things in here to throw, he might have to ask someone to fetch additional breakable objects. He's in charge, right? He can do that. "Right, now everything's sorted, you can tell me _why_ you thought it a good idea to let Rilienus _risk his life_ to--"

"He's been doing that since he decided to leave Minrathous, in case you didn't notice." Bull points out, cutting across him. "It's not my place to tell a grown man not to do what he thinks is right. Besides, it was a good plan. Your friend would have the makings of a half-decent Ben-Hassrath, I reckon."

"A fine compliment." Dorian snarls, "Although I didn't think the Ben-Hassrath encouraged recklessness."

"It's no worse than anything you or I get up to pretty much all the time." Bull sighs. "I'm not going to back down on this one, Kadan. Pacenti made a decision. That's part of his job. You're going to throw his fealty back in his face?"

Dorian shakes his head. "I understand why he did it. But just the thought of what could have happened--"

"Pacenti's a tough little bastard, for a bookworm." Bull adds, helpfully. He probably thinks it's helpful, at least. "He's nearly as thick-skulled as you. I feel sorry for Marcus."

Dorian slaps his arm lightly. "Don't joke about it." Then-- wait. Wait. "Marcus."

Bull puts on his most innocent face, which is always a red flag. "What about him?"

Oh, _Maker_. That's just not-- but Marcus' response to seeing Rilienus injured, Rilienus' palm against his chest, how long has this been going _on_? "Marcus _and_ Rilienus."

"Yes?"

Dorian stares at him. Bull is smirking. "You-- well, of course you'd know, you're a spy."

"Everyone who isn't completely blind knows, Dorian." Bull chuckles. "Drusa calls them _Papa_ and _Mama_ , for Koslun's sake, what did you think she was referring to?"

"I--" Dorian racks his brain for an excuse, and gives up.

"He told me once, _Dorian gives me the courage to have courage_." Bull adds, gently. Then, before Dorian has a chance to even think of how to respond to that one, "Then he threatened to kill me if I ever hurt you. It was sort of adorable."

"Skinner threatened to flay me. In some detail." Dorian replies. "I can't say I'd call it 'adorable'. Also, you ever go behind my back again like that and I'll ask her for _advice_."

Bull holds his hands up. "Look on the bright side. Nobody's dead, and you get to tease your friend about his love life."

He does have a point, damn him.

* * *

In the morning, Rilienus, mildly pointedly refusing to rest, lays out exactly what information was in the documents he'd apparently prepared for the specific purpose of getting them stolen-- information about the Tranquil in Vol Dorma, and the cure, enough detail to tantalise, not enough detail to do any good.

He looks a little out of sorts, but a large part of that may be due to the fact that Marcus is hovering over him, with an expression Dorian can only describe as _protectively angry_. Rilienus clearly has noticed. "I would like to point out that out of everyone in this room, I am the person who has been injured the _least_ number of times in the course of my duties."

"The _course of your duties_ does _not_ involve--" Marcus starts, and the discussion dissolves into the two of them sniping at each other over _reckless_ and _overprotective_.

"--not some babe in the woods!"

"I don't know how I never noticed before." Dorian says, with a sigh to Bull. "This is like my parents arguing."

Marcus looks over with a guilty start. Rilienus just glares. "That's a scurrilous mischaracterisation if ever I heard one."

The standoff is thankfully broken at that point by Avis, who bursts into the room, tosses a letter vaguely in Dorian's direction and makes a bee-line for Rilienus. "Pacenti! Hey, you don't look that dead. Figured you was done for, the way this one was carrying on." He flicks a grin at Marcus. "Suppose it's romantic and shit. The dwarf was making notes."

"Speaking of scurrilous mischaracterisations." Dorian says, noting Mae's mark on the wax seal before he breaks the letter open. It's been a little while; hopefully she's fine. "So glad Varric has found someone else to tempt his so-called 'muse'."

Bull says something in response, but he doesn't hear it. Or, he registers, vaguely, the familiar rumble of Bull's voice, but the words don't reach him at all. It's not until he feels a hand on his shoulder that they get through. "Dorian?"

He blinks. The letter is still clenched in one hand, words stark against the paper. "I-- it appears I won't have endure people sending messages addressed to _Magister Pavus the Younger_ anymore."

Rilienus snatches the letter out of his hand, all thought of his argument with Marcus forgotten, and Dorian lets him, prioritising sinking back into the warmth of Bull's embrace, instead.

* * *

Dorian,

Forgive me for the briefness of this note; I hope word of this can come from me before it comes from some more unsavory source.

Your father is about to be stripped of his title and holdings. Technically, the vote will not be for another week, but you know how things are here. The cause is his refusal to disown you or denounce your actions. It seems some of your more ambitious cousins were not willing to wait for him to finally pick a new heir.

I offered him my help, but he refused. He said, specifically, _I do not need your aid, nor my son mine_. I see where you get your pigheaded stubbornness from. He has returned to Qarinus, should by some strange twist of fortune you are inclined to write to him.

Your lady mother remains in Minrathous, and is quite well as far as I can tell. No details, because she refuses to answer my invitations to tea.

If you do not hear from me for a little while, do not fret; the situation here is such that I am inclined to be cautious.

Mae


	13. On Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter mostly just an excuse for Krem!feels

When he was young, the words Krem hated most were _you could be so pretty if you just tried_. Nothing he's ever truly wanted has been so easy to reach as _if you just tried_. The first time he cut his hair short was when he was thirteen; his father gave him a hiding he wouldn't soon forget, while his mother fussed over why he'd do such a thing.

What stared back at him in the mirror was still wrong; just a girl with short hair. He wouldn't have words for _why_ until after he met Bull.

Varric asks him once, at Skyhold, about romantic literature in Tevinter; voice pitched to carry so that Dorian will half-turn and glare at them both. With that sort of encouragement, Krem decides to go into some detail on the stories of the sort favoured by the Soperati, generally involving a pretty mage and a gruff soldier and a happily ever after.

"You better not be comparing me to one of those simpering idiots in the ballad operas who swoons so often you begin to suspect she has some sort of fainting disease." Dorian says.

"Hey," Varric replies, with an innocent grin, "we're just discussing the arts over here. I can't imagine why you'd assume it had anything to do with you."

He taps his fingers against the table, in mock-consideration. "He _did_ faint into the Chief's arms that one time on the Storm Coast."

Dorian gives him a look something like a cat that's just been dropped in a puddle. "That was from blood loss!"

He supposes Dorian doesn't quite get it; hasn't ever sat in the cheap seats, getting told off for hiking his hateful skirts up to something approaching comfort, while some lad up front brandishes a wooden sword in defense of a lass with her curls tumbling over her bare shoulders. Tragedies they leave to the upper classes, who apparently don't get enough of that shit day-to-day to tire of it. You go to the theater in the lower town and you can be assured: happily ever after is only ever a sufficient number of sword fights and a final duet away.

Ismene aint the sort, in his opinion, that needs to try. She has the looks to play the heroine, the obligatory dark curls and sea-green eyes right out of that ballad about the girl from Vol Dorma she'll glare at him for humming at her, thinking it a joke. In her hands, though, you can see the marks of someone who knows what work is. That's as it should be. He's not interested in any pampered princess.

Nothing he's ever truly wanted has been easy, but when he catches a glimpse in the mirror now-- the man in his armour, still dusty from the road, and the woman who rests her hand on his shoulder, prideful glance at the rest of the room, _look what I have_ , well.

He'd take the hard road every time.

Might skip the duet, though. His love, sweet though she is, couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.

* * *

Gize is married to her taciturn second-in-command, a fact Dorian doesn't even figure out for a month after she's become a permanent fixture in his life.

The fact that Drusa sometimes beds down with them he doesn't figure out until much later, and shamefully, after Rilienus hears of it. Not that it's any of his business, of course, but-- is he just bad at noticing these things? Why is he apparently always the last to know?

Drusa sometimes beds down somewhere else, too. "You can cage a bird, or you can hear it sing." Gize says once, with one of her shrugs; it turns out to be a reference to some dreadfully obscure Corti poem, of course, which only makes it more significant. Gize might quote Salvetti facetiously, but her beloved Corti she takes deadly serious.

* * *

Avis likes tits, as he so succinctly puts it, and despite the fact that his flirtation methods appear to be as subtle as a knife to the face, does reasonably well for himself. "Although what they see in you, I have no idea." Ismene says once, annoyed at too many jabs at her and an absent Krem, and Avis' response is an obscene tongue gesture that makes Dorian re-resolve to make sure Avis and Sera _never_ meet.

When it comes to actual sleeping though, Drusa's the only one who ever gets close, though they're chaste as siblings.

( _Don't say that_ , Drusa says, _I know what Altuseses get up to with their siblings_ )

* * *

Marcus' bed is more suited for double occupation; this may have something to do with the fact that Rilienus' bed doubles as book storage, with a Rilienus-shaped space in the middle of it.

Marcus has one rule; no paperwork in bed. Tonight, as Rilienus frets, he says, "I think the rule should cover paperwork you do in your head. Also, I don't think you'll make Pavus worry less over his Pa by trying to do it for him."

"So what would you suggest I do?" Rilienus asks, distracting himself by trying to get the mirror to hang straight, which it never does.

"Fucking me blind seems to help with your stress." Marcus says; Rilienus can see him grin in the mirror, ducks his head instinctively to hide his answering smile.

"You know I don't appreciate that filthy tongue of yours." he says. A blatant lie, but what would be the point of years of learning how to lie with a straight face (or "politics", as his father would call it) if you didn't get to use it for something fun once in a while?

"You going to come over here and teach me a lesson?" Marcus asks. "Come, Altus, tell me what you'd like me to do about this filthy tongue of mine."

"Your blatant provocation is noted." Rilienus says, turning away from the mirror.

"My blatant provocation is _working_."

* * *

Bull doesn't try to take him straight to bed after dinner, which is nearly a pity, because Dorian was winding up to have a fight about how not everything is fixable with sex.

Instead, they end up in a dusty courtyard-- not saying much, Vol Dorma is constantly covered with a thin layer of the stuff, he thinks it might blow in from the Anderfels. "Wait one moment." Bull says, and then drags into the centre possibly the ugliest statue in existence.

"What is _that_."

"Awful, aint it?" Bull sounds _proud_. "Me and the boys found it in some magister's garden. Hope he didn't pay the sculptor too much."

Dorian eyes the ghastly thing. "I'd be surprised if he let the sculptor _live_." Then he realises why they're here. "Oh, I see. The other way you think everything is fixable. With violence."

"You saying you're not tempted?"

"No." Dorian says, with a glare, and then, when Bull waits him out, "Fine, _yes_ , but only because there's no way to get to Qarinus and ask my father why he doesn't just _fucking disown me already_." He punctuates the last with a burst of flame that doesn't do much but take some of the gaudy paintwork off; stone doesn't burn that well, although in this mood he feels like taking that as a challenge. Bull, to his credit, doesn't say anything stupid like _maybe he thinks he's doing the right thing_. "If he thinks some grand gesture is going to sway me... he can go _rot_. I don't care."

Lies. He does care, and that's what makes him so angry. That even after everything, there's a part of him to whom his father's opinion still matters. Warmed unwillingly by this show of-- support? Blunt stubbornness?

He switches to ice, chilling the stone to brittleness, then casts his eye around for something to hit it with that's not his staff. Silently, Bull offers him a workman's hammer, a ridiculous thing utterly unsuited to a mage, barely more than a stone on a stick. It takes him both hands to lift it.

The first swing takes one of the arms of the statue off, spinning him around with the momentum of it; it takes a few more blows to fell the thing, and a great many more before he feels satisfied that the chunks of stone will not arise to offend his artistic sensibilities again.

It does help, a little. His arms will ache tomorrow, but he might at least sleep. "Done?" Bull asks, watching him with a familiar look in his eye.

Dorian is covered in sweat and dust and bits of the worst statue no longer in existence and must look a mess. "I am _filthy_." he says, without thinking, and tuts before Bull can say it. "Do _not_."

"I'll sort you a bath." Bull says, instead, with a grin that suggests he's still thinking on _filthy_. "Get you all nice and clean."

"Well," Dorian allows, "if there's a bath to follow, I suppose I could be convinced to get a little filthier."

If his arms are going to hurt tomorrow, he might as well have the ache in his thighs to match.

* * *

Dieter does not dream but still remembers, very well, precisely, with objective analysis.

Red hair and freckles, dirt under her fingernails from the garden, not at all what a Magister's daughter should be.

Sideways smiles and mint tea, picked fresh.

Tears in the night; _what if he's twice my age? what if he's cruel? what if I don't want to make a good match and live in Minrathous?_

Actions that are now, seen objectively, foolish. More tears; Dieter does not remember why those moved him so, to action, to violence uncharacteristic. _Attacking a Magister, attempting to kidnap his daughter. The poor girl, she's too shocked to give evidence_.

Incorrect. He rests his fingers on the piece of paper Altus Pacenti gave him, that says the untruths are untrue. That is good. Things should be correct. Estimates of risk, of success, they've discussed. Dieter was unable to accurately answer the question: _is this what you want?_

Red hair and freckles; _I'm so sorry, this is all my fault_. Incorrect. Dieter recasts the question in light of known information: _is this what she would want?_

Yes, with high degree of confidence. Estimate of risk: irrelevant.


	14. Hissrad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning: this chapter does contain (non-graphic) references to rape.
> 
> This chapter also contains Hissrad.

Atta weeds in Master's garden, tucking anything that might be useful into her skirts. Master only wants the decorative plants here, each groomed into perfect order, sending her out to pluck away the unwanted and unruly. There are hiding places here where she grows her things, along the edges of walls, in the shade beneath sculptures, in places off the paths where the feet of the masters never tread. Even should she be discovered, Master will never know it's on purpose-- he calls her a stupid, ugly girl, he'd never think her capable of deception.

_Girl_ makes her swallow laughter, given she is older than Master, was here when he was the boy and his father held the whip. Ugly is fair enough, and she's never minded it; everyone knows what happens in this house to pretty elves. Stupid is wrong but a cloak under which to hide yourself; mother taught her the herbs, the ones the masters know and the one the masters think are weeds, and when the things that happen to pretty elves happen to pretty elves it is Atta they call on to staunch their hurts and purge their wombs.

At the back of the garden, there is an elaborate stone-lattice fence that faces onto the mews-road. Carriages and horses move along behind, the carriage-men and stable-boys, whether they be slave or free, in a little world of their own. A world the masters never see, and why would they? They built this fence and grew the vines across it to shield from their delicate eyes little matters like who deals with it when a horse takes a shit.

The vines shield other things from their eyes, too. She kneels, bending to pluck semper-grass from along the border, while another hand gently, without looking, slips into a hidden place and fetches a thin slab of stone. She rests it on her lap while she weeds, pluck, pluck, pluck.

Two pillars, crossed with a snake - Vol Dorma, and all it now stands for. A tower, topped with a flame - Perivantium. Three strokes, with the crossed half-circle of midnight - three nights from now.

She has been waiting for this message. The guard in Perivantium has been thinned considerably, men sent west at the command of a Magister Lyceus (oh yes, she listens; she knows the names, she remembers the names). They are to assist with taking out the rebels, the Reformation. Master says they'll soon be crushed.

Atta does not point out that it has been some time now, and she has not heard word of the men returning. She is a stupid, ugly girl, after all, and what would she know?

Master jokes of heading out there himself, to show these peasants what's what, and that would be a fine thing, too, his blood and bones scattered in the dirt of Vol Dorma, the way his father ended up in Seheron, and good riddance. But it does not matter; it matters only that the gate guards are half the number they used to be and that his personal guard is down to two men. Anyone with skill or patriotism to spare has gone to Lyceus, to the rewards they say will come to those who fight for the glory of the Imperium. For the chance to be something more than stuck in Perivantium, something Mistress complains bitterly about. No dressmaker of any note, dinner parties where they serve pickled fish and southern wines, she says, to her newest slave, a pretty elf of fifteen summers or so who suffers the attentions of her master with the dull acceptance of one who has already learnt that the world is a terrible thing to be endured.

Atta has endured. Three-score years and more has she endured. She would not will that on any other living being. So it is that she whispers in the night, as she makes bitter tea to ease bitter tears, salves for scars. Old, ugly Atta. She goes everywhere within the bounds of her master's little kingdom. She listens, and she speaks to everyone who is no-one in his eyes. And three nights from now her masters will learn that herbs are not the only thing that old, ugly Atta smuggles in her skirts. She licks a thumb and draws it across the stone to erase the previous message, fishes a stump of chalk out of her waistband, and draws two curves. An ear.

_This house hears you_.

* * *

Lyceus is doing something odd. Dorian really doesn't like it when his enemies do something _odd_.

Bull, Drusa's notes in one hand, shifts one of the markers on the table and frowns at it. "If he'd pulled back a little, I'd say he was trying to bait us into a trap. If he'd just stopped advancing, then he's waiting for reinforcements. If this information is right, though, this is a little larger scale than that."

"Pulling east could mean connecting with something going on in Solas or Perivantium, if he's heading back along the highway, or up to Vyrantium if they're meeting up with someone, or something, from the port." Marcus' fingers trail across the map, highlighting routes.

"Something going on in Perivantium?" Dorian snorts. "Not unless you have a great interest in preserved foodstuffs. Solas--" and it does feel so weird to refer to the place, given the bitter aftertaste the name leaves in his mouth for entirely different reasons. "Someone at the archives there, perhaps? Some item he wants access to?"

"There's nothing at any archives that would give Lyceus cause to move so many troops, surely." Rilienus bites his lip, makes some note in one of his books, some scribbled calculation. "Whatever his reason, it gives us breathing space, at least. We cannot expect your Nevarran friend to extend her stay much longer; we must move ahead with Dieter's cure."

_Your Nevarran friend_. Cute. Dorian takes a step around the table, as if viewing Lyceus' troop movements from another angle will provide some kind of sense.

"Could be Marnus Pell way," Drusa says, suddenly. "There was a count-- but less you know what they're counting to or what they're counting for--" She snatches the ink, draws hurried, scratched lines. "I seen some of these, the past couple months. Scratched here and there. Chalkspit, you know it?"

She draws two lines and a squiggle over them, then a triangle, facing downwards, with two interlocking circles atop it, and then a series of lines. It's no language Dorian knows. "No, I've never--" Rilienus looks just as confused as him.

"The lines are for time, right?" Marcus says. "Knew a Liberati in Seheron, he used to mark off his service like that. And the circles are chains-- he did them with a break in it, for _Liberati_."

"Look at you, Papa, knowing things." Drusa says, pleased. "Yeah, it's thieves and slaves that use it, mostly. This one's for Marnus Pell. A boat and chains, see? Pillars and a snake is Vol Dorma. So it's a message - a count-down, maybe. The ones I saw had different times on, but they all mean something happening between Vol Dorma and Marnus Pell, right?"

"No." And when did Avis get here? "Wrong. Places aren't always places." His fingertips linger on Drusa's drawing, looking more pensive than Dorian remembers ever seeing him. "She told me, long time ago. Ways to warn. Marnus Pell can mean _slavers_. Minrathous means _magister_. Vol Dorma used to mean _soldiers_."

Into the silence that settles around Avis' uncharacteristically serious outburst, it is Drusa who asks "Used to?"

"You think it's only Magisters who pay attention to things going boom?" Avis spits, neatly hitting the symbol of _Marnus Pell_. "Vol Dorma means _rebellion_. Where'd you see it, though?"

"Mostly up where Lice-ass is sitting now, just a bit off the highway towards Marnus Pell." Drusa says. "You saying somebody's fermenting rebellion? Other than us, that is."

" _Fomenting_." Rilienus and Dorian say in unison.

Marcus shakes his head at the two of them. "Rebellion in Marnus Pell could explain the troop movements, certainly. Lyceus has bulked out his forces by recruiting heavily across south Tevinter - it must have left holes in the local defenses. He may be regretting that now."

Avis smiles. "Wouldn't mind that. Be good to think people feel they've got the chance to stab some bastards in the bits that need stabbing. It's weird, though. A message like that, you don't spread too widely. Who's travelling along the highway and needs to know what day the folks in Marnus Pell are nobbing the nobbers in the nobs?"

"Shit." Bull says, suddenly. "Oh, _shit_." When Dorian looks, his eye is wide and he looks genuinely worried. "Drusa, have you seen any of these?"

He draws a few signs out; abstract, sharp-edged things. Drusa points to one, then another. "Maybe. Not sure."

"Bull?"

"You know who else knows chalk-spit, travels cross-country and has an interest in _fomenting_ rebellion, or at least destablising Tevinter?" Bull points to the second sign Drusa pointed out. "This one means _Hissrad_."

_Kaffas_. "You think it might be Ben-hassrath? To what end?"

"You said to me, when I first arrived," Rilienus says, slowly, brow furrowed, "that the bulk of the army wouldn't come after us because they're guarding Minrathous or tied up facing the Qunari."

"Make enough fuss," Marcus adds, completing the thought, "and you'll draw troops out of Seheron and the Eastern Imperium. Everyone there will complain about weakening their defences, and Minrathous will almost certainly ignore them. But a slave rebellion in Marnus Pell wouldn't do that. It might delay Lyceus for a bit, if he's ordered to go sort it, but that's about all."

Bull shakes his head. "It won't be just one place. You want a small distraction, light a fire. You want a big distraction, don't hang around to try and make it a big fire, light a lot of fires. All of this, all we've accomplished? Like laying down kindling. Every day Minrathous fails to put our heads on a pike makes it worse. Half the country's just waiting for somebody to light a match."

* * *

There is blood in her mouth. When she makes it up the stairs, the girl lies dead beside her mistress. Atta picks her up, the feather-light thing she is, and lays her on the couch, covers her, silk that soaks the blood-- but why shouldn't she have silk, the poor thing? _Mistress_ she leaves where she lies.

She spits as she heads down the kitchen stairs, red. The blood keeps coming up, though. One of the guards is lying at the foot of the stairs, neck broken. She spits again as she passes him.

Ah, the kitchen. She takes the brandy, heaves herself into a seat.

"Are you all right, sister?" It's the new fellow from down the road, one of the elves they bought a month or so back. She saw him with the carriages just last week.

The way she saw him fighting earlier, though--

It's done now, and not time for thinking on it. "Have a drink with an old lady, would you?"

"Of course." He slips easily into another seat, pours for both of them. The good glasses. They sip in companionable silence for a while. Crashing noises from outside - the looting will go on for a while, she imagines. At least the fires haven't reached here yet.

He refills her glass. "Think I might be staying here, lad." she says. "Figures, eh? Always been here. You heading..." Atta gestures, to indicate the great wide world she's never seen. "Some of the lads are going west, they said. To the Redeemer."

He laughs, short and sharp. "I wish I could. I have a friend that way. Well. Something of a friend. Mostly a terrible liar. My work lies north, though."

"Hissrad." someone says, hovering in the doorway.

He turns, nearly a snarl. "I am having a _drink_." he snaps, and then turns back to her, smile soft. "Apologies, sister." His hand fumbles to hold hers, pressing neatly into her palm, a piece of chalk. "Could you show me your mark? You must have one."

She nods, shaking hands reaching out to scratch it out on the table, two leaves. Then, after a moment, she adds beneath it, two circles, the second broken.

"Of course." _Hissrad_ says, with another soft smile. "Atta who brings the herbs."

She doesn't recall giving him her name. Does she know him? Her mind clouds over, she cannot remember. There have been so many, the dead, the lost, the sold-away. His eyes. The boy, that poor boy--

Her lips form around the name, but no breath comes to let it spill out of her mouth. She closes her eyes. She feels a touch to her forehead, like a benediction, and hears his voice-- foreign words, not elven, she knows enough to recognise elven, _meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun_.

She knows not the meaning, but she lets the rhythm of it carry her into the darkness, nonetheless.

* * *

Atta who brought the herbs. He finds himself tracing her mark on his thigh with his fingers. How small she looks.

He will not let his anger master him. _Anaan esaam Qun. Anaan esaam Qun. Anaan esaam Qun._

"Hissrad." the man says from the doorway, after a moment of silence. "We found another _saarebas_. Hiding in the cellar next door. Young, the son or the apprentice maybe."

He nods. "Let us see if he knows anything. I want a burial detail here. The dead should be treated with the respect they deserve."

"Aye." The man pauses. "That mean we should cut down the _saarebas_ from the gate?"

Gatt snorts. "Each with the respect they _deserve_. Let him rot there. And remember to put the Vol Dorma mark on the gateposts. We're doing the work of the Reformation, after all. Credit where credit's due."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got asked about what all these OC's look like and because I apparently can't just describe people without it turning into longwinded headcanon/backstories, this happened:  
> http://redeemer-headcanon.tumblr.com/


	15. Twins

Castor Lyceus has very good hearing. It is not difficult to pick up the tone in his brother's voice that means _this discussion is over_ , even from a room away. Is it still called a room, when they are in tents? When he is able he should consult a reference text. He makes a mental note of it.

His brother's actual wording is "You may tell the Magisterium that I will take their advice with the consideration it deserves. As always."

It is hard to make sarcasm, but Castor can understand it, even as he is now. He pours two goblets of wine, taking care to make them even. His brother is very insistent about that.

He marks off the seconds, the footsteps, the light swoosh of the leather flap that hangs to cover the doorway (mental note: check if it is still called a doorway). Pushes one of the goblets to the other side. It is metal, which is best because his brother will not break it in a temper. Melt it, perhaps, yes.

Pollux Lyceus drains the wine in one long gulp. "That _shit._ " he says. It is unclear if he is referring to the messenger or to Dorian Pavus. Perhaps both.

Castor sips from his own cup. It is not unpleasant, and a single glass does not impair his functioning. It would distress his brother to mention that fact, though, so he takes a phrase from his list of things that are true but also not upsetting to Pol. "If you drink so quickly, you won't taste it properly."

"Nag." Pol says, but his lips quirk slightly. Happy. "This mess, ugh. Apparently, the Magisterium think the Pavus brat has acquired the powers of teleportation now. It's the only way to explain why they're convinced he _personally_ incited slave riots across half of southern Tevinter. Even though I know I have that cock-sucking little upstart pinned down in Vol Dorma. Maybe I'll get lucky and a sandstorm will blow in from the Anderfels and he'll choke on it. From what the rumours say, it'd have to be a particularly _large_ sandstorm, but one lives in hope."

"You don't believe in luck." Castor says. Across the map the markers make patterns, interesting patterns. "I read the reports. It doesn't match."

"Mmm, yes. Pavus isn't above killing-- did you know, he challenged Brocchus to an actual duel and she actually accepted, that twit." Pol frowns at the papers. "But not like this. Perhaps it's what happens when you outsource your revolution. He's still an Altus, no matter what. There are things that implies. Things that tend to make you avoid things like mutilating the corpses of your fellow mages or staging public executions and other such charming diversions. No. Whoever is doing this, they may still think they're allied with Pavus or working in his favour, but they're no longer under his control, if they ever were in the first place."

"Vyrantium have requested reinforcements." Castor informs him.

"Vyrantium can kiss my ass." Pol says. "They didn't give me _shit_ , they've still got the men to hold their own. They're just running scared. These riots are the problem. Thousands of slaves and thieves and opportunistic scum running about setting fire to things as they please, decent folk scared for their lives. I won't have it."

"Why Carastes?"

"What?"

Castor points to the map. "They pull you out with Marnus Pell; work their way east to Perivantium to control the highway, free movement along the south border. Yes. None closer to Minrathous than Marnus Pell. Yes. Fear would make the Magisterium take further action, should be avoided. It makes sense. Why Carastes? They risk reinforcements coming down from the north."

"Oh, you mean if the Magisterium pull their heads out of their asses and realise I'm only one man? I suppose so." Pol grumbles. "Who knew getting ideas below his station would do so much for a man's surviability. I do wish Pavus was stupid enough to accept a challenge. It'd be a fantastic fight."

"But why Carastes?" Castor asks, again. "This does not make sense. They lit up so orderly, like little candles. Like mother on the Feast of the Old Gods. Just like; each has a reason and a place and is on fire. But he does not have the numbers to face you directly, even without reinforcements. Why?"

"Because," Pol says, "People who set things on fire tend not to have the long-term planning capability to realise that kicking up a fuss in Carastes is a good way to get half the Qarinus garrison to come spank your-- _shit_. Surely even Pavus wouldn't--"

"Brother?"

Pol is scribbling a message, ignoring him for the moment. "Gaius!" he yells, which is a cue for his aide to step in. "I want this sent to Qarinus, to Magister-- no, scratch that, I want it to go straight to the head of the Garrison. With all due haste, and I mean _all_. If I am right, the messenger in question may find himself immortalised in song, but only if he's quick enough."

When Gaius departs, Pol sags. "And now to hope that either I am wrong, or Qarinus has the sense to not send too many of their troops out into the countryside to put out fires. While I have the unenviable task of putting out _Marnus Pell_ , a place I normally wouldn't piss on, without letting Pavus get too big for his britches. And you-- you need to keep looking over those documents, see if there's anything we've missed."

Castor glances sideways at the Vol Dorma documents. "That would not seem to be a priority. I can assist with--"

"It's my priority." Pol says, flatly. "Do your work."

Castor pauses, takes the time to analyse this. His condition upsets his brother, he knows, but it is stable, non-degenerative. He will be no more or less Tranquil should he spend the rest of the week helping to organise relief efforts for local citizens or strategy for the fighting. The cure, should it really exist, will not be divined from that pile of paper. Pol should know these facts, but he seems consistently inclined to ignore them. There are words he's heard, words he's not sure how to interpret. "Am I your weakness?"

Pol narrows his eyes at him. "Tomorrow, you point me out the man who said that. Also yes. _Show me a man without a weakness, and I will show you a man without a soul._ "

"Salvetti." Castor says. "My favourite." Like the wine, and the scent of cinnamon, and robes of blue and green, like the sea, and otters. He knows these things because he takes care to make note of it when Pol says _this is your favourite_.

Pol kisses him on the forehead. As he pulls away, his lips quirk again. Sad? "You don't mean that." he says, softly. "But you will again, brother. I swear it."

* * *

"Are you sure about this, kid?" Bull is on edge, Dorian can tell, and Rilienus having spent half the morning babbling blithely about the wards he's laid down in case of demon possession has not been helping.

"Yes. I will help. Pull the parts together where they were broken and don't let the hungry things in through the edges."

"Really, _really_ didn't need to hear that last part." Bull mutters, glancing over at Dieter's kneeling form.

This is the best they've come up with, a mix of Seeker rituals and Tevinter training exercises. He still kind of wishes he could have hired someone to paint Divine Victoria's face when Rilienus' analysis of their previous results was _well, yes, but those were all Southern mages. Tevinter mages are far better trained._

He may have a point, but Dorian wasn't going to bring it up. (He's seen her do the blood boiling thing. Wouldn't recommend it as an experience.) Individual cases of brilliance aside, the training for mages in the south seems to have been rather patchy, and 'don't get possessed or the Templars will kill you' is _not_ an actual focus mantra.

It's still not a guarantee, which is why Dorian is standing here with a staff and mentally running through everything Cassandra has told him about when things go wrong-- it'll be Rage, or Despair, most likely-- with Rilienus' wards a familiar itch at the back of his neck, the way he'd feel it if he wandered down the wrong corridor at the Pacenti estate. Certainly wouldn't want to attempt any necromancy under these conditions, but it will buy them time if things go pear-shaped.

He sighs, rubbing at the part of his neck where the phantom itch sits, not that it ever helps. They've had garbled information that _something_ is happening at Marnus Pell, some sort of revolt or rebellion or riot, but there's still most of an army sitting between here and there, and they haven't really been able to establish _why_ or _who_.

And the standard approach to deal with these matters would be for Lyceus to take his men and pile the bodies high until there's nobody left to riot.

And that's even putting aside the case where Bull is _right_.

There is really, probably nothing he can do about it, beyond what they already are: watch, and wait, and hope to take advantage if the situation gets out of Lyceus' control. So he turns his attention to Dieter instead.

At first, there's nothing; just Dieter mumbling softly whatever focus mantra it is he picked, and Cole crouching before him, staring as if searching for something only he can see. That might be an accurate description, actually. Divine Victoria, one of the Nevarran Templars, and Bull stand with varying levels of tense readiness. Rilienus, head bowed as if in prayer, is actually funneling more power into the wards.

It feels a little like the moment before a rift bursts open, which is not particularly a happy thought.

Then, he feels the air start to chill. A curl of ice is forming in Dieter's cupped hands. The sight brings back old memories-- he wonders if there's any mage-child in Tevinter who hasn't been taught that one at some point, forming shapes, the simplest demonstration of control it's possible to make.

After a moment more, he realises the shape forming is a rose. An traditional sort of token. The perfect sort for the case where you'd like the evidence you were wooing to melt away by the time her father gets back.

Suddenly, it shatters, with a noise that has Dorian instinctively throwing up additional barriers against an attack that never comes. There's only Dieter's voice, a wailing, sobbing sound like Soperati women in the streets of Qarinus when the troop ships come back from Seheron emptier than they left. Trails of ice slither along the floor, haphazard, uncontrolled and he sees Bull throwing a certain look at Divine Victoria who answers it with a slight shake of her head. _Not yet_.

Then the ice recedes, and it's just a man, weeping. No mantra but the soft repetition of his love's name, which dissolves into soft, wordless sobs.

"It's done." Cole says, quietly. "It hurts, but it hurts like it should. He wanted to keep his promise. _My heart will always sing to the beat of yours_."

Dorian finds himself blinking back tears. It's probably all the dust about. Gets into his eyes. "Corti is actually worse in translation, who knew?" he mutters.

"Dieter should rest." Divine Victoria says. "Our part in this is done."

Rilienus nods. "I've warded his room. It should give some protection from the more aggressive inhabitants of the Fade while he's readjusting."

"When will I be able to fight?" Dieter is still kneeling, his head down, and his voice is rough, but it rings clear enough in the small space. "I don't want to sit in a warded room and _readjust_. When will you allow me to fight?"

Standing behind, Rilienus shakes his head. Rilienus has an entire plan laid out for Dieter's recovery and what Dorian is about to say might ruin it, but-- he understands, he thinks. Understands the urge that rises up from the pit of your stomach and says _this isn't the way it's supposed to be. do **something**_ , whether _something_ is wise or not. "Mages who want to take a combat role train alongside everyone else. You can join them when Rilienus feels you are able-- or when you can beat him in a training duel, whichever comes first." Grinning at the stunned look on Rilienus' face, he adds, "He's actually much better than he would like everyone to believe. Don't go too easy on him, Mouse."

Rilienus tuts. "I _will_ be claiming hosting rights." he warns, which means that Dieter may well spend his recovery period throwing spells at the magic equivalent of a fortress wall. Rilienus is not the most talented dueler but give him time to prepare and you'll regret it. "And you'll be joining the training sessions when _I_ feel you are able."

"Upside down in the library." Cole adds, which makes Rilienus laugh and Dorian groan and Bull give him a look that says he'll be explaining that one later, whether he intends to or not.

He'd come back that first summer after attending the circle full of semi-warranted superiority and decided to demonstrate his newly learnt skills; Rilienus had asked for the favour of preparing the dueling area, as part of his hosting rights, and Dorian hadn't even thought twice before agreeing. This has a great deal to do with why although his record against Rilienus in general is pretty good, their first 'duel' had ended, fairly swiftly, with him upside down and complaining that Rilienus was breaking the rules.

Divine Victoria gives them all a look which says _you are not taking this solemn moment very solemnly_ , but the truth of the matter is that after all the build up, the magnitude of what they've just done is having some trouble sinking in.

And besides, Dieter is laughing; a soft and slightly broken sort of sound, but it's there all the same.

* * *

The first refugees start arriving sometime in the night. Dorian first knows of it by a knock on the door, and by Bull, who can snap from sleep to wakefulness in moments, gently shaking him out of his dreams.

It's Avis' voice. "You really, really, really need to come see this." He sounds gleeful, and he practically dances down the stairs. Outside, people are gathering in the central square, a ragged group. Bull shadows him closely; there have been assassins hidden among such groups in the past.

He hears the word _Redeemer_ and sighs internally. He really doesn't like the title, but it seems to be sticking. "From Marnus Pell?" he asks Avis.

Avis shakes his head. "They've come from the east. They've done freed themselves, Pavus, and they've come to help. And they say there'll be more to come. It's like Bull said. They've woken up, and now the whole country's going to light up."

"I didn't say it was a _good_ thing." Bull says. Dorian imagines he's scanning the crowd for possible Ben-Hassrath.

"Why not? Your Ben-Hissers might have lit a match or two but the fire's still ours. These people are _free_. Isn't that what we're fighting for?" Avis spins on his heel, turning to face Bull. "And if the Qun come after us, I'll fight them, too. I'll fight fucking _everybody_."

He slides down the railing, landing with a flip that raises a cheer. Dorian follows at a more sedate pace, trying to quiet the unease in his belly.

"Your father--" Bull says, hesitant, carefully pitched for Dorian's ears alone.

"Magister Pavus can take care of himself." Dorian replies.

He hopes so, at least.

Maker help him, he hopes so.


	16. Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wonderful, wonderful person drew [Dorian's Inner Circle](http://redeemer-headcanon.tumblr.com/post/123311110437/monsterpub-warmup-sketches-of-other-peoples) for me. I have never actually gotten art for a story before, this makes me so happy. Please go gaze upon this amazingness.

Colours are an issue. He wasn't expecting that.

Dieter's not surprised that he feels angry, sort of all the time. He's not entirely surprised that occasionally someone will do something like bring him mint tea and he bursts into tears for what probably appears to be no reason. He's not surprised at the things which haunt the edges of his dreams, even with Altus Pacenti's ( _Pacenti_ , just Pacenti, dammit, the man himself keeps saying he doesn't expect any title) wards thick like molasses over him, a warm blanket.

But he finds himself constantly distracted by colours. The sky is so very blue. The walls of his little room are painted in green, and the floor is polished wood-- and who knew how many colours of _wood_ there were? He finds himself staring at a little flower, growing up through a crack in the courtyard, red with these white streaks in the petals, and he's so entranced by the beauty of it, by his own ability to recognise beauty, that he wastes a good half hour and is late for training.

Not that Pacenti seems annoyed about it.

One of the many things currently making Dieter angry is that he can't make Pacenti angry. He can't even make the damn man _sweat_ , fucking Altus stoneface. They train under wards only a little easier than the ones he sleeps under, which mean that any flare-ups are well-controlled, but also means he does't even get the release of breaking something when things go wrong.

Plus, Pacenti keeps saying annoying things like _direct your anger_ which are all very well coming from a man who doesn't have any. Dieter's tried everything, he even poked at the rumours about his 'relationship' with Pavus, but all he gets is a calm "Oh yes, I was very much in love with him. But nothing could ever have come of it."

Today, after an hour that leaves him light-headed and with a feeling that he's making very little progress, he tries again. "How about a demonstration? If you're _capable_. It's all theory to you, isn't it? _Direct your anger_."

Pacenti smiles, in a way that makes Dieter want to punch him a little. That it's only _a little_ might actually be a sign of progress. "Are you ever afraid that you'd hurt her, if you saw her again?"

Since that very possibility haunts his dreams, he does flinch. "Thought we were talking about _you_ , Pacenti."

"My 'capabilities'?" Pacenti lies his staff gently against the wall. The wards grow a little heavier. "You would like to know what I am capable of, to rephrase. I suppose that's a perfectly sensible request. You've also expressed interest in whether or not I was really in love with Dorian."

"Yes." He feels the anger receding beneath a deep, deep, sense of unease. Dieter knows love as a force as wild as any storm, that sparks through him like lighting across _her_ fingertips, and Pacenti's calm really just isn't right, somehow.

"Before I met Dorian I'd never loved anyone or anything in my life." Pacenti says. "My mother used to rotate the staff, you know. Prevents the formation of inappropriate attachments. It was, to borrow a phrase, all theory to me. So I didn't actually know, at first. I didn't have anything to compare it to. What is the first step, Dieter?"

Oh, is this actually a teaching thing? Dieter thought Pacenti might just be trying to creep him out. "Visualisation."

Pacenti nods, closes his eyes. "The day after he came back to visit. It was sweltering hot, so we'd taken refuge in one of the cooler parts of the library. He wore cream and gold, very much the fashion, of course. He kept fidgeting, and I couldn't work out why. Finally, only after he was sure we were entirely alone, he confessed to me that he'd kissed a boy at the Vyrantium circle."

There is a crack that makes Dieter just about jump out of his skin, and one of the training targets at the far end of the room, a simple stone pillar, falls apart in two neat halves. " _Shit_."

"I'm going to tell people you did that." Pacenti says, calm as the eye of the storm. "Now, I think I see the issue. You've been thinking I'm trying to teach you to use your anger to fuel your magic. I'm trying to teach you to use your magic to control your anger."

Dieter considers asking _are you ever afraid?_ but decides that really, he probably doesn't want to know.

* * *

The population of Vol Dorma swells, like the wave before it crests, and by the time the people coming in are those who have trekked all the way from Perivantium they have a much better idea of what's going on, which is to say the information is still confused and imperfect.

The newcomers tell stories, fairly consistently, of new slaves or travelling merchants, elves and men who'd whispered secrets and distributed weapons and encouraged all manner of things in the name of Vol Dorma, of the Reformation, of the Redeemer. The result is chaos. Fires, opportunists taking advantage of the situation, ordinary people probably still hiding in their homes, lingering fighting, all across Southern Tevinter. Lyceus has taken much of his forces towards Marnus Pell, so that and the surrounds will probably come back under control, and Vyrantium, it seems, remains under control of the Magisters there-- not surprising, for a circle town with one of the highest concentrations of powerful mages outside Minrathous. 

Dorian still remembers Vyrantium; it would never haven fallen easily. No, the places they aimed for are the sort more powerful Magisters have little interest in, the weaker ones enjoying their status as big fish in a little pond, the lack of real competition undoubtedly lulling them into a false sense of security.

Who _they_ is has not yet been confirmed. Bull hasn't spotted any Ben-Hassrath, and when anybody is asked about the ones who told them when and where and who and how, their stories are all vague, those who started it all never among those who made it to join the Reformation proper. Most of those who actually come to Vol Dorma are former slaves, some peasants, a few younger mages. The thieves guild are moving in where empty space has been left behind, in some cases; Drusa makes contact with someone she knows at the next main stop east on the highway, at least maintaining free passage along part of the route.

"It doesn't make sense." Bull says. "This is a lot of effort just to help _us_ out. I can't see what my-- what the Qun would get out of it. Chaos? Yes, but only along the south border so far. Converts? I haven't heard a single person even mention hearing about the Qun."

Information continues to trickle in; it sounds like a number of ex-slaves have headed south, over the borders. Dorian receives various letters from the south expressing cautious support, although it is clear that there is some suspicion about large numbers of Tevinter refugees, even the human, non-mage ones.

Still, there's no doubting that it has helped them out. Lyceus has been forced to pull back, opening up supply lines to the east and giving them room to reinforce and build up defenses, time to train those who wish to fight, to find places for those who don't. Rilienus appears to be taking a particular petty pleasure in parceling out land formerly belonging to magisters, homesteads for those looking for a quiet life far from the front lines.

It also gives them time to consider, given the relative success of Dieter, whether to continue with the cure for Tranquility. While the rest of their visitors have returned for the moment, Cole remains behind, certainly kept busy enough with the amount of hurt swirling about Tevinter. Distraught, Dorian thinks, by the way that _helping_ Dieter has given him more room to hurt, but determined to help more, all the same. There are several potentials among the remaining Tranquil, and a few more have arrived with the other refugees, accompanying family or old friends or just drifting, uncertain, looking for guidance.

Dorian knows the feeling. "I don't see where this ends." he admits to Bull, curled in bed and considering how long he can delay getting up again. "Avis may presume we're here just to fight everyone, but I could spend the rest of my life embroiled in a war with no end and _still_ never get Minrathous to change their minds about a damned thing." Not said: _my life, and yours_ , because Bull is stubborn and determined to make Dorian's cause his own; or perhaps Dorian is his cause.

"Pacenti has half the South treating Vol Dorma as a sort of city-state." Bull says. "If Minrathous have their hands full of Qunari, they might choose peace with you over fighting a war on two fronts. There's possibilities."

"One being that they pretend they're interested in peace and then knife me in the back." Dorian replies, resigned. "They assassinated an _Archon_ for less, Bull."

Bull's hand tightens on his hip. "They'll never get close enough."

They might, given enough time or enough luck, and they both know it. "At least I can feel a little sympathy for them; I know what it's like to have your hands full of Qunari." He means, _want to stop talking about it?_

Bull chuckles. "What, a pain in the--"

"Don't you _dare_ finish that sentence."

They stop talking about it, then, at least for a little while.

* * *

His first warning, such as it is, is to head into his own 'war room' to find a wooden duck on the map table and Cole sitting in the corner, legs hugged to his chest. "Cole?"

"I still couldn't find one with wheels." Cole says. "I'm sorry."

"That's-- quite alright." Dorian tells him. "Is there something wrong?"

"Your hurt was always tangled with his." Cole says, wide-eyed and not particularly helpfully. "But it was hard to hear, when the others are so close and so _loud_. I thought that was why."

Before Dorian can start to untangle what on earth Cole is going on about, there is a stampede of footsteps from outside and Rilienus appears, not even bothering to knock, breathless and rumpled, clutching an open envelope. "Cole." he says, to the spirit who is staring at him. "Fetch The Iron Bull."

Cole nods and disappears in a moment. "What in the blighted--"

"Dorian." Rilienus says, voice shaking a little. "Could you sit down? Magister Lyceus sent a messenger. With a letter for you. The information is _not_ confirmed, but all the same-- you should-- you should probably just sit down."

Dorian snatches the envelope out of his hands, and then slips the letter out of it. "Just hush and let me read, Mouse. I'm not going to faint at whatever it is."

He doesn't. He does take a few shaking steps back until the bookcase is behind him, something to lean on. "Dorian." Rilienus says, softly, and Dorian stumbles forward again, lets Rilienus wrap comforting arms around him. He doesn't cry; not on Rilienus' shoulder, not when Bull arrives and Rilienus passes him over into larger, warmer hands.

He doesn't know what it is, this numb sorrow, empty and hollow. How many times has he thought of what he'd say or should have said, daydreams of proving himself, ties that he still can't break. How many times words spoken in anger, _I hope he chokes on his so-called pride; I wouldn't take the time to spit on his grave; I don't care what he thinks; I don't care; I don't care; I don't care..._

"I can't feel his hurt." Cole says. "Tangled threads trailing, but there's nothing there. Only echoes of pride. Gone, gone, _gone_."

* * *

Dear Magister Dorian Pavus,

Officially, I am not supposed to address you as Magister, but officially, I shouldn't be making contact with you at all, and indeed officially should have crushed your skull beneath my boot some time ago, and we both know how that's going. I do hope you are well; I would be most put out if anyone except myself was to be the cause of your demise. How would you feel about a duel at sunset? A trifle trite, I know, but sometimes the classics are classics for a reason.

The situation being what it is, however, I am afraid I will have to delay our glorious battle for a little while. Let me speak plainly: a large Qunari force attacked Qarinus a few days ago. The disturbances Minrathous think are your doing were a distraction from a distraction - to hide that the riots in Carastes had the sole purpose of drawing forces out of Qarinus before the attack.

Thankfully, I was able to get word to Qarinus in time; the attack force were rebuffed, although not without casualties. I feel that you should be informed that initial reports indicate that Halward Pavus was among them, having participated most vigorously in the defense of the nation, etcetera. I will spare you empty words of condolence, as I am not actually sorry for your loss. There are certainly worse ways to go, though. I am certain you know that as well as I do.

I would appreciate it if you did not kill my messenger. Quite frankly, I could use every man I've got.

Regards,

Magister Pollux Lyceus

p.s. tell Pacenti Junior that he's a tricksy bastard. If I find out that your cure for Tranquility is nothing more than a ruse, you will watch him die slowly before I kill you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rilienus' side to the little story he tells Dieter may be found [here](http://redeemer-headcanon.tumblr.com/post/124060862502/rilienus).


	17. Pater et Filius

In the breathing space left by Lyceus' preoccupation with Qunari and rioters, Dorian finds things to do. Many, many things. He drives the thoughts of his father out of his head with training and construction projects and scouting and so much paperwork Rilienus jokes that he's going to forget how to forge Dorian's signature.

Well, he tries, at least. Bull can take him out of his head for a little while, but he can't stop Dorian waking in the middle of the night to wonder if it was quick, what his father thought of before he died, if it was him. Worse, Bull is such a light sleeper that it's impossible for Dorian to wake without waking him, too; it's not that he's not grateful for Bull's presence in those moments, but he also feels a little guilty for how little sleep Bull must be getting.

To be thankful for: the Tranquil are keeping Cole too busy to dip into his grief overmuch. Following in Dieter's footsteps comes Petra, whose cure goes relatively smoothly and then Valen, a gangly elf who spends the week after being cured having to be regularly talked out of whichever cupboard he's hiding in. Rilienus has him doing paperwork in one of the offices that gets very little foot traffic.

Of the former tranquil, only Dieter has shown any interest in combat, and now that Rilienus has cleared him for it he is appearing at training sessions. At every training session, to be specific. Ice is his forte, and he's actually quite good with it, but he's also been training with his staff blade, learning to get up close and personal, working off that softness that all the Tranquil have.

He demands duels, pretty much every chance he gets, and given his current mental state Dorian is more than happy to oblige. He wins, of course. Dieter's obviously picked up a couple of tricks from Rilienus, but Dorian knows _those_. He's also overly aggressive, and nearly good enough to get away with it, but Dorian worries a little about the thought of actually letting him out on the field of battle.

Still. "You're getting better." he says. "You nearly had me for a moment there."

"That's because you were sloppy." Rilienus says, from behind him. "Nothing yet." he adds, as Dorian turns to ask what he means by that, and after a moment Dorian realises it was aimed over his shoulder, at Dieter.

Probably nothing that's his business; he'll get it out of Rilienus later. "How was I _sloppy_?" he asks, instead.

"Do you really need me to point it out? Would you like a list?" Rilienus holds out an envelope, thick, black-edged. "Communications are getting through from Minrathous again now Lyceus is pulling in towards Marnus Pell. Magister Tilani's sent word, too-- she and hers are all fine, she sends her sympathies, and some useful information about the political climate in Minrathous after the attack on Qarinus. I thought I should bring this one directly to you, though."

The handwriting on the front, _Magister Pavus_ , is vaguely familiar, and his suspicions are confirmed when he turns it over to see the seal. The intact seal. "You didn't open it?"

"If Magister Pacenti had intended for me to open it," Rilienus says, tense, "I am sure he would have addressed it to me."

"Pacenti." Dieter interjects suddenly. "Since you're here, could you help me with some training?"

Rilienus half-smiles, gestures to his not-at-all-combat-ready outfit. "Now?"

"Planning to let me get close enough that it matters what you're wearing, Stoneface?" Dieter responds, lightly, and Dorian, watching Rilienus, sees at least some of the tension fall out of his shoulders. "Come on."

"Go on." Dorian says, because the set of Rilienus' jaw is familiar and _fathers_ , really. "Feel free to rub his face in the dirt for me, Dieter. _Sloppy_."

He tucks the envelope into his robes, doesn't open it until he's back in the office with nobody to possibly look over his shoulder. There is a lingering trace of magic on it-- Rilienus, checking it?-- but the seal breaks without troublesome side effects.

It is not a long letter, at least by the standards of Rilienus' family. Underneath it are more documents, much thicker.

_Magister Pavus_

_All due sympathies upon the untimely death of your father. It is always a tragedy when Tevinter loses one of her own. I hope this letter finds you well. Have you seen the signs of autumn yet, down there in Vol Dorma? This season brings storms, you know. Do be cautious._

_You have noticed, I suppose, the form of address. You may consider it partly an acknowledgement, and partly an offer. The enclosed documents I have sent you with the full knowledge of the Archon, in the hope of bringing this entire messy business to a mutually satisfactory ending._

_In summary: your magisterial seat will be ratified. As replacements to those unfortunates who failed in their duties, additional seats will be granted to a maximum of twelve persons of your choice, subject to the Archon's agreement that said persons are of suitable nature. Lands you currently control will be considered as having been legally under the Edict of Reformation, thus protecting yourself and your compatriots from legal proceedings over the actions you have taken during your most commendable stand against the Venatori cult._

_Furthermore, the status of Liberati will be granted to all residents of these areas who so desire to claim it._

_In return, you will take the following actions:_

_You will disband all militias, dismiss all mercenaries, and turn control of the 5th Regiment of the Imperial Army over to the nearest legitimate commander. This would be Magister Lyceus, I would imagine. No actions of courts martial will be taken although I would not suggest Marcus Aclassi holds his breath waiting for a promotion._

_You personally will return to Minrathous to clarify that your actions were solely in the defense of Tevinter and against the influence of the Venatori, and clearly denounce all riotous acts. You will swear, as a Magister, to uphold the law of Tevinter and involve yourself in no further military action without direct permission from the Archon._

_You will supply all documentation you have on the actions of the Venatori so that legal action may be taken by the Magisterium where appropriate._

_You will ensure that any and all citizens of foreign nations and members of quasi-military organisations of dubious provenance will vacate the territory of Tevinter._

_Having done all the above, you will dissolve the Reformation._

_For detailed conditions of the offer, please do take the time to look over all the documentation in full. The messenger has been instructed to wait._

_You may be interested to know that I have recently taken custody of my grandson. My wife finds it most pleasant to have a child in the house again._

_Yours,_

_Bellicus Pacenti  
_

* * *

Castor pauses, cataloging the voices in the next room (now they have moved into Marnus Pell proper, they are no longer in tents, which reduces linguistic ambiguities). After a moment, he pours three cups of wine.

Talia is first, her clothes still dusty from travelling, her red curls neatly pinned. She thanks him when he hands her the glass, and sips daintily. "Are you well, Cas? How is the war going?"

"I am quite well." he replies. "We control more than eighty-seven percent of Marnus Pell and surrounding areas, including all major roads and fortifications."

"Good, good." she replies, and smiles at him, leaning in. "And progress on the research?"

There is only one area of research in which Talia and Pol share an interest. "Documents recovered from Vol Dorma indicate the Reformation may have access to a cure via their southern connections. The information on the cure is incomplete, however, and the documents we have may contain false information. The list of names--"

"Names?" Talia interrupts. "Of Tranquil in Vol Dorma?"

"Part of the legal framework established by the Reformation has been to overturn as invalid various legal decisions made by the courts under the oversight of the former Magisters of Vol Dorma." Castor says. "A list of Tranquil in whose cases the Rite was misused forms an apparent shortlist of potential recipients for the cure. The first name on the list is a case who was made Tranquil under conditions which are remarkably similar to my own, which is almost certainly deliberate."

His brother's footsteps sound behind Talia even as her eyes widen. She snatches the remaining cup of wine before Castor can move to stop her, whirling about to throw it in his brother's face in a single movement.

Pol doesn't even attempt to dodge it, although Castor is fairly sure he could have. He just sighs. "Amata--"

"Missed me, did you?" she says. "Just wanted to see me?" Castor pours another cup for his brother, putting it out of Talia's immediate reach, and looks for a cloth.

"I had every intention of telling you." Pol says. "I could hardly put it in a letter though, now, could I. It wouldn't have been secure."

"If I had _known_ ," she replies, "I would have made greater haste-- oh, don't tell me, that would have been _suspicious_ , I suppose. Do forgive me, Magister Lyceus. I am but a foolish girl from Vol Dorma, I cannot be expected to keep up with your machinations."

Pol takes the cloth, wipes down his face. "You are more than a mere girl. You are perhaps my only hope of figuring out the truth of this. If they're not bluffing, Dieter may have already been cured. Who better to tell me whether it is real than the woman who knows him best?"

She stills, and does not move when Pol takes his new cup of wine. The expression on her face is uncategorisable. "You are sending me to Vol Dorma."

"I need to _know_ , Talia." Pol catches her around the waist, pulls her in. It is like a dance, Castor thinks. "If they are liars, come back to me and I will crush them, and we will dance in the ashes. If it is true--"

"If it is true," Talia says, so soft Castor has to strain his ears to catch it, "I may not come back."

"Also an answer. I know you would not betray me for anything less than him, _whole_." Pol shakes his head, lifts one hand to stroke her cheek. Always gentle with her, like a little bird. Mother kept little birds. "If it is true, things become complicated."

"I would still let you know." Talia whispers. "I will make you a promise, Pollux Lyceus. If it is a lie, I will give it up. I will let him go. I will come back to you and be yours. If it is true, then no matter what else happens, I will make sure Cas receives the cure."

"More than fair." Pol says. "I could ask for no more."

Castor wonders if he is in love with her. Pol refuses to say, only that they are _kin in disaster_. It is a quote. Salvetti again. Talia is small and soft, even in anger, and her magic is the genteel gift of a lady, a Magister's daughter taught only to demonstrate her suitability as wife and mother. She should be no threat at all.

And yet, when Talia retires to her own quarters, Pol pours them both another glass of wine and smiles at him, the smile he wears for duels. "She might just break my heart, you know."

Castor does not know what that means, but he is certain it is not something he should like.


	18. Chess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been so bad at updates, I'm sorry.

Bull scans the letter, snorts. “Right. Tell me about Pacenti senior.”

“Smart, patient, manipulative.” Dorian lists off, thinking still of the harsh set of Rilienus' jaw, how he still hasn't been told. “ _Kaffas_ , I can't believe he addressed it to me and not even a word to Rilienus-- well, I can believe, it's exactly his style, that bastard.”

“Is the offer genuine?”

“If I set it on fire, it won't matter--” he says, but even as he says it he knows he can't just ignore this. “Yes. He wouldn't write lies on paper. Nobody will ever catch that man in a lie. We can't trust him, of course. There will be demons in the details.”

Bull hums under his breath, flicking through the 'supplementary documentation'. “Junior must know plenty of Senior's tricks.”

Another thing he has to do even though he's not looking forward to it. “Yes, and isn't that going to be a pleasant conversation. I'll corner him in his office, more private. Nobody ever knocks up here, even when they're _not_ trying to assassinate me.”

He's about to ask Bull to grab Marcus when he comes back off patrol, make sure he knows what's going on _before_ he finds Rilienus locked in his office being angry at piles of paper, but that is the moment when Drusa proves his point, rushing into the room, the door banging against the wall. “ _You_ said we'd fixed it so if you re-magicked people they wouldn't murder us all, Pavus.”

Ismene is a moment behind, with a slightly clearer explanation. “Pacenti is going to live, first off, but you know that 'ice-blade' trick Dieter's been trying to get under control? It's not under control.”

* * *

There's still a melting pile of shattered ice in the courtyard, and a gathered-- not a crowd, precisely, but the sort of clumps of people you might get when the crowd scatters after a fight is done. Beyond, in the tent the healers use for the inevitable training mishaps, Rilienus is sitting facing Dieter, his left hand tight around Dieter's wrist, talking urgently.

He's also stripped to the waist, with one of the healers hovering beside him attending to his shoulder. The sight draws Dorian to a halt for a moment, because that's a lot more Rilienus then is usually on display. Then he hates himself a little, because really? Not the time, or the place.

“Not bad, for a bookworm.” Bull says, thankfully only at a volume Dorian will hear.

“Not the time, or the place.” he responds, although the grin tells him that Bull knows full well that Dorian was looking, and that he doesn't mind.

When they're close enough, Rilienus twists as much as he can without disturbing the healer and sighs at Dorian. “Really, I tried to stop Drusa disturbing you over this. As you can see, I'm fine.”

He's telling the truth, as far as Dorian can tell. There's an ugly, jagged laceration on his shoulder, which the healer is stitching, and a few scrapes otherwise. Dieter stares at the ground; only Rilienus' hand around his wrist seems to be holding him in place. “I lost control.” he mutters. “I could have killed him.”

“You all need to stop underestimating my barriers.” Rilienus says, with another sigh.

“Plus, his skull's really hard.” Ismene adds, having followed them back over. “Honestly; I should know, seeing as I nearly gave him a concussion the first time we met. And then Avis gave him an actual concussion, to be fair.”

“I hate horses.” Rilienus mutters, but smiles at her. “As Ismene points out, I'm sturdier than I look. Besides, it was my fault. I said some things I should not have. Really, all this fuss over a little training mishap.”

Dorian suspects the staccato, rapid-fire downplaying of the incident is primarily for Dieter's sake. The hand not still captured by Rilienus is clutching his own knee, frost still sneaking out from between his fingers. “That's not what you said that time I set your hair on fire.” he says, because clearly any focus on Rilienus' current injuries is not helping.

“I lost _both my eyebrows_ because _somebody_ wanted to try out something he'd read in a book. Not even an _actual_ duelling technique, something invented by a _fictional Nevarran_.” If you look closely, it's clear that he's still in pain, but Rilienus grins at Dorian and Dieter looks-- a little lighter-hearted, perhaps, beneath the sad puppy face.

“In my defence,” he says, watching the frost recede from beneath Dieter's fingertips, “it worked. Maybe a _little_ too well, but the Pacenti training rooms are pretty well fireproofed, so it was only Mouse here who got a bit scorched.” The memory is a fairly amusing one-- the memory of the trouble he'd gotten into for it, not so much.

“Oh, shut your smug face, Peacock.” Rilienus says, with absolutely no heat behind the words at all, and releases Dieter's wrist. “We can work on this, Dieter.”

Dieter nods, still looking mostly miserable. “I'm sorry.”

“So you've said. Apology accepted, so I've said. Repeatedly.” Rilienus looks up. “I am sure there's something you want to talk to me about, Dorian, but it will have to wait until I'm stitched up. Actually, it's likely this is something we all need to discuss.”

Kaffas, he'd nearly forgotten about the letter. “There's-- some parts that should be discussed in private.”

“Involving matters of custody?” Rilienus says, and waits the beat for Dorian to not deny it. “Father is more predictable than he'd like to think. I'll come speak to you when this is done with. Ismene, could you do me a terrible favour and intercept Marcus when he comes off patrol, _before_ he hears about any little mishaps through rumour and gossip?”

Ismene laughs. “Oh, sure, give me the easy job, why don't you.”

“The rest of you,” Rilienus says, waving his hand at the gathering mob of curious onlookers, “Off, off. You're crowding the healer, let him work.”

* * *

Bull is clearly not happy about mishaps. “Normally, a _training mishap_ generally doesn't come with the risk of possession.” he says, pacing in Dorian's office. “I know he wants to do it, and that you want to prove this whole thing works, but have you considered-- _not_.”

“He's not going out into the field.” Dorian points out. “Not until we're reasonably sure he can handle it.”

“By the Tevinter definition of _reasonable probability of demons_? Great, just great.”

“He has to have the choice.” That's the thing, really, more than Dieter getting his magic back. The tranquil don't make choices.

“Yeah, well, I remember some _thing_ that was all about _choices_.” Bull retorts. “Just-- it makes me nervous. Is Pacenti being careful enough? He pretty much admitted to _goading_ somebody with shitty emotional control, back there.”

Yes, Dorian had been a bit curious about _said some things I should not have_. Still. “It was probably a training exercise. You can't test your control by avoiding every single source of conflict.”

A polite cough from behind them. “I wish it had been that.” Rilienus says, looking much better now he's all buttoned back up. He's obviously taken the time to fix his hair, too. “I'm afraid I was in something of a foul mood, since the receipt of a certain item of mail. He was pressing me about finding Talia, I-- deflected, ungracefully.”

Several things fall into place. “You've been looking for his sweetheart?”

Rilienus clears his throat, very deliberately, looking embarrassed.

“You've found something out.” Bull says, slow and careful. “Something you don't want him to know?”

“My connections in Minrathous are not _entirely_ lost to me.” Rilienus admits. “She was married off, soon after the Rite, to a certain Magister. And then she was widowed, in very short order.”

Bull chuckles. “Well, good on Talia.”

“She didn't do it.” Rilienus says, quickly. “We are talking a girl of nineteen summers, The Iron Bull, against a Magister of more than thirty. No, her husband coincidentally died in a duel, having stupidly challenged a veteran of Seheron in response to some unspecified insult. Would you like to guess _which_ Magister, a veteran of Seheron, also a pain in our collective posteriors, was the man who killed Talia's husband?”

Oh, this does not sound good. “I see why you might want to avoid discussing this with Dieter. What happened to her after that?”

“Rumours have her linked to Lyceus after the duel. _Romantically_ linked.” Rilienus makes a face of distaste-- either at the thought or, more likely, Dieter's reaction to finding out any of said rumours. “I can see the possibility. She had few connections in Minrathous, but her situation attracting Lyceus'-- peculiar sympathies-- is not that unlikely. They have something in common, after all, and Lyceus' distaste for those who misuse the Rite _is_ rather long-standing. There is also the issue of her current whereabouts-- that, I do not know.”

“Well, shit.” Bull summarises, neatly.

“Leaving that aside, for the moment.” Rilienus says. “Let me see what ridiculous demands my father has made of us. I'm sure they're insultingly unfair.”

He almost looks pleased at the thought. Dorian will _never_ understand this love Rilienus has of paperwork.

* * *

With Talia on her way, it is only two cups of wine. Castor examines the marks on the incoming letters and sorts them, accordingly. Those which are day-to-day business he handles himself. Some, he sets aside for his brother.

There are two. Pol opens the first, bearing a now familiar seal-mark, with a roll of his eyes and a very large gulp of wine. “Another reminder from Magister Pacenti that on top of everything else, I am to put down a revolution without accidentally murdering his heir, I suspect.” The seal broken, he flicks the letter open. “Dear Magister Lyceus, please remember I pretty much own you, also I am a complete bastard, yours sincerely-- _huh_. That's interesting.”

“Magister Pacenti has additional instructions for us?” Castor enquires, because Magister Pacenti often does; some are sent through official channels, and some, like this, through less official ones.

“He reminds me to take care that the road to Vyrantium is well guarded.” Pol says. “Translation: he wants me to back off on the Pavus brat. Again. Do you believe in coincidences, Castor?”

“We don't believe in coincidences.” Castor replies, because that one he knows.

“Quite. Which is the reason I need _that_ letter.” Pol reaches for the second, which bears a slightly blurred mark, obscuring the identity of the sender. It may have been on accident. “I _presumed_ Pacenti junior had already headed south by the time Pacenti senior decided to pick me out as his war-dog. Protect his son by ensuring he had a leash on whoever was commanding the forces in the area. Hope he comes to see sense and returns home in time.”

Castor watches Pol open the second letter, quick sharp movements. “Information on the timing of Rilienus Pacenti's alliance with the Reformation is inconclusive.”

“But then I thought,” Pol continues, ignoring that statement, “How far does the fig fall from the tree? What if Senior knew exactly where Junior was heading? What, if, for example--” and here, he smooths out the second letter and grins, “he hired mercs to ensure he made it as far as the borders of Reformation territory? That might suggest they're playing a different sort of game.”

Castor does not complain, but he sometimes struggles to follow his brother's metaphors. “Chess?”

Pol laughs. “Quite so. And I am _done_ being a pawn.” A pause. “At this moment, I do wish you hadn't gotten rid of all the breakable goblets, that would have been the perfect moment to smash something.”

Castor considers what he knows of Pol's preferences for dramatic gestures. “You could set one of the letters on fire.”

Pol grins broadly. “Here, memorise this first, then.”

It is a letter from Minrathous, giving details of a bodyguard instructed to follow Rilienus Pacenti down the Imperial Highway until such a point as Reformation presence became strong enough that said accompaniment may be discovered by the enemy, then withdraw. The document itself would hardly stand as proof of anything in court, but Castor memorises it anyway, without pointing this out, because those were his instructions. “I have committed the information to memory.”

“Right.” Pol clears his throat. “ _That might suggest they're playing a difference sort of game_.”

Castor blinks, but deducing his brother's wishes is not difficult. Understanding the meaning behind them, harder. “Chess?”

“Quite so.” This time, Pol takes the letter back, lets fire flare between his fingertips. Not overtly dangerous, considering his level of control, so Castor does not consider intervening. “And I am _done_ being a pawn.”


	19. Talia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: This chapter contains references to marital rape (honestly the only bad thing about Lyceus killing Talia's husband was that he didn't do it slow)

He fucked up.

Oh, Pacenti's trying to put a brave face on it, but that's what Pacenti does, and besides, the fact that he didn't actually do any permanent damage really isn't the point.

Part of him is kind of impressed that he actually managed to make Stoneface bleed, although that probably isn't a helpful way of looking at the problem. Since there are a lot of crazy angry people with knives who are quite fond of Pacenti around here, it's definitely not the sort of thought he should be voicing.

But it's not bad, to be strong. If he can control it, he can fight. If he can fight, he can make things right, or at least less wrong, or at least make the sort of people who fucked him over in the first place pay.

First, control. That means, as Pacenti said, that he's got no time for guilt. Don't be sorry. Be better. Fix it.

If worst comes to worst, he can always just get himself deep into enemy lines, where it won't matter if he loses control. He imagines Pavus' response to that suggestion and laughs at himself. That's another sort of thought he shouldn't be voicing.

Dieter seems to have quite a lot of those, lately.

But he does at least want to show that he's trying, so he works through his exercises till he feels he's going to go blind with boredom, because if he can do this then Pavus will let him kill things. Because people come to him now, to find out if it's really true-- and he has to be the one to show that it is.

The first step is visualisation. He thinks of the old woman who confessed to him, in whispered sobs, that she put a pillow over her daughter's face rather than watch her like that, one more day, and he thinks of the others like him, all of them, struggling, grief and anger, and the man who spat in Pacenti's face when he was told that his cousin wasn't a suitable candidate, Pacenti's calm murmured apologies an immovable wall--

And he thinks, always, of his Talia, and those who took her from him. Suddenly, everything seems to just fit, like all the pieces of the puzzle falling together-- it's not that he needs to deny this anger, it's that he needs to stop wasting it on things that don't matter.

He doesn't actually know what Pollux Lyceus looks like, so he imagines Talia's father instead, his sour bony face, the pain of the blow, magical force behind the swing of a Magister's staff. _Know your place_.

Ice cleaves one of the targets in two, as neatly as any of Pacenti's little tricks.

“Oh.” Dieter says, to the air, and indulges himself in a laugh. “I do. I finally _do_.”

* * *

It starts as innocent as anything, her father's new apprentice, a sweet local boy, who she sometimes brings tea in the evenings when he's hunched over his books. He admits he's not much one for ambition; he just wants to find some decent work, look after his mother, settle down and raise a family.

To Talia, who wishes she was allowed to spend more time in the gardens and less time being drilled on Minrathous manners and having her knuckles rapped for letting too much Vol Dorma into her accent, who fears the sort of ambitious man her father's probably planning to marry her off to, Dieter's simple, humble plans for his future sound like the ending to a fairy-tale.

How it ends like a nightmare, Talia doesn't know. She never thought much on consequences beyond the idea of her and Dieter in one of those little houses in the west end of Vol Dorma, maybe a little boy with freckles like his father.

“Quit sobbing.” her new husband says, with some distaste. “You're a magister's wife, not some southern slave-girl fresh off the boat.”

One of the slaves-- an older elven woman, nobody she recognises as she wasn't allowed to bring anybody with her to Minrathous-- silently helps her bathe, afterwards. At least she has rooms of her own. “I wonder,” Talia says out loud, as her bed is being turned down. “If there are herbs that will stop you getting pregnant. If I wanted a child, I should probably avoid those.”

The elven woman does not respond, but when another brings her breakfast in the morning there is a cup of something hot and bitter on the side of the tray. She does not recognise the smell or the taste, but she drinks it anyway. The worst it could be is poison, and she's not sure she'd mind.

If nothing else, she will deny that man a son. If nothing else, she will decide that much.

She thinks of their cook back in Vol Dorma, and the way she used to scold the maids if they cried. _If you're going to cry, cry salt_. Grief by itself does nothing at all. So she stops crying; she becomes the outward model of a young wife, and she drinks her bitter tea and is thankful that her husband doesn't require her involvement in his nightly visits other than her wordless acquiescence.

And she waits.

She has several thoughts about how she might ruin him, but in the end, it comes down to one thing: she needs a patron. Another Magister, one more powerful than her husband, someone with his own reasons to want to see him fall. In the meantime, she makes sure she knows as much as is possible-- his business ventures, his connections, anything that might be useful.

She does not know how long it will take, but it's not like she has anything better to do with her life than plot revenge.

* * *

Talia meets Castor Lyceus before she meets his brother.

Some party, dull; she bears it as long as she can, but there comes a point where pretending she doesn't wish pretty much everyone in the room dead is far too much for her. She excuses herself for 'some air', and attempts to find the gardens. She's fond of gardens at night. It reminds her of sneaking out the kitchen door to pick fresh mint for Dieter's tea, the way he'd look at her, as if she'd brought him the moon rather than a cup of hot water with some leaves floating in it.

The grief takes her by surprise for a moment; occasionally it will flare up like this, hot and sharp as a new wound.

“Are you unwell?”

She doesn't realise at first, because the man who speaks to her is handsome, well-dressed, robes of emerald green fastened with silver and matching silver clips in his dark braids. He looks like any other party-goer, except that when he comes closer his eyes regard her with blank disinterest and his forehead--

_This is not your fault._ Dieter's voice, calm and empty. _The punishment was given for my actions, and mine alone_.

Not a Tranquil belonging to this household, surely, not with as ragged as their host runs his slaves. Nobody dresses a Tranquil like this. “Are you-- a guest at this party?”

The Tranquil nods. “I like parties. My brother says so.” He holds out a hand. “Castor Lyceus.”

She lets him take hers, and he kisses it in greeting, perfectly proper. “Talia.” she says, because she'll be damned if she names herself that man's family when she doesn't have to, and then a sob breaks out of her throat, because he looks so nearly normal, and yet not, and somewhere in Vol Dorma does her Dieter still live, like this, like half a life? Castor offers her a handkerchief in response.

There are footsteps from behind her. “Cas, are you making pretty girls cry?” When she turns, the speaker is like a strange mirror of the Tranquil; his hair is clipped short, his clothes well-cut but much more practical, more battlefield than ballroom, and his eyes are bright and sharp and focused keenly on her. “How nostalgic.”

_Lyceus_ she thinks, and suddenly remembers, the strange Laetan magister who dresses like he expects a qunari invasion to occur at any moment and takes his Tranquil brother with him to parties. Powerful, and unpredictable, and the winner of a number of high-profile duels. “I was just looking for the gardens.” she says, but doesn't pull away from Castor's gentle touch, taking the handkerchief-- emerald and silver lace to match his outfit-- and carefully dabbing her eyes.

“I'll walk you there.” Lyceus says. “And on the way, why don't you tell me why the sight of a Tranquil dressed in something other than sackcloth makes you cry.”

* * *

She supposes she's not technically an adulteress, in that Lyceus doesn't fuck her until after she's a widow. He's half-wild with bloodlust, and she thinks of her husband's broken body and laughs through it, like riding the storm.

If this is love, then it is the sort that will tear the world apart.

_If_. She can't connect that fellow-feeling that fills her when Pol talks about finding a cure, about making those who hurt his brother pay, with that gentle, softer feeling that overtook her every time Dieter smiled, shyly offering her some sweet or trinket he'd found and thought she might like.

Once, he'd tried to write her poetry. It had been terrible, and wonderful, and she'd read it a hundred times and laughed every time.

Pol stuns a would-be assassin and tells her she needs to know what it feels like to kill. “Not really a fair fight.” she points out, looking at the man, limbs shaking with the paralysis.

“Fair fights are a lie we tell to children.” Pol tells her. “You know the world isn't fair, Amata. Time to grow up and be unfair right back.”

It feels awful, as a matter of fact. She hesitates, which makes it worse; he soils himself midway through and the smell haunts her for days. “I don't like to kill.” she decides.

Pol shrugs. “Most don't. But _could_ you?”

She looks to the far end of the room, where Castor is organising notes, entirely unconcerned with the subject of their conversation. “Yes.”

* * *

For this, though, she does not need to kill. Only to lie, or at least not speak the truth, and she's been doing so much of that since she lost Dieter, it does not feel very difficult at all.

She travels to the highway, and finds many others drifting towards Vol Dorma. She lets all that old training go, and slips back into her old accent, and is at least partially honest about her reasons for heading to find the Reformation.

She's not the only one who has heard rumours of a cure for tranquillity; not the only mage seeking an escape from the bounds the Magisters place on all who aren't them. A motley, ragged group she travels with, but she comes to like them.

A lot of them are quite angry. She can relate to that.

When they arrive, there is a sort of system in place at the gate. Soon, they are separated, people being drawn away into different groups. The two women with three children between them are drawn to one side with what looks like other families; a couple of the ex-slaves have a short, impenetrable discussion in slave-dialect with an angry-looking, scarred elf armed with a lot of knives, and then head off with him.

A woman with a staff who looks so stereotypically Vol Dorma Laetan that a small, nasty part of Talia snickers at it, goes from mage to mage, splitting people up by some unrecognisable system. The moment the word 'tranquil' leaves Talia's lips, she redirects her to see Rilienus Pacenti.

Now there's a name she's heard, mostly from Pol ranting about his father, but also from Pol warning her to be careful about tipping her hand. He's very polite, and kind, and she will not let herself forget that he is also The Enemy. Men like this run Tevinter. Men like were proper and polite when they signed documents saying they could kill Dieter, death-without-death. Men like this turned Pol's grief and love for his brother into a weapon they could use.

Men like this smile at Talia and say “To be honest, it's quite a relief to see you here. I was worried about how to break it to Dieter that I couldn't locate you.”

Men like this-- she blinks-- _wait_. Hope she'd refused to hold onto suddenly blooms, warm in her chest. “Dieter--”

“Since the cure, he's wanted nothing more than to see you again.” Pacenti says, soft and gentle. “I can take you to see him now, if you'd like?”

If she'd _like_? Dieter wants to see her, Dieter _wants_ , and Pacenti wonders if she'd _like_? Her footsteps stutter in Pacenti's wake as he leads her through Vol Dorma, past a training ground that she should be taking notice of for Pol, only she can only think _I've been on the road for days, I must look a mess_ , and _is this a lie, is this a lie?_.

And then, a room.

The mark's still there, on his forehead. He's dressed for battle and his forehead beaded with sweat-- oh, it's a training room. He sees her, and there's a gasp and a startled burst of ice and she nearly laughs, because the last time she saw Dieter lose control like that was the first time she got up the courage to kiss him.

Pacenti might step out of the room at that point, or he might fade into the background; she doesn't know. “You're-- you.”

Dieter might have fade-stepped at that moment, as quickly as his arms wrap around her. “I'm me.” he says, and then there's nothing else, no need for words when his touch is so gentle and familiar, when he still looks at her like that, like nothing has changed between them. “My love, I am so very _me_.”

_I'm sorry, Pol_ she thinks, briefly, and remembers another gentle touch.

_Do what you must, Amata. No man will have ever been so happy to have his heart broken._


	20. Shartan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Talia's arrival is greeted with varying levels of stab-happy, and Dorian and Bull get some downtime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Various RL issues have put a bit of a cramp in my writing lately, but I promise I haven't abandoned this.
> 
> And now I better go check what rating I put on this, because bits of this chapter turned out smutty. Oops.

“I think it's sweet.” Drusa says, sitting on Dorian's desk and drumming her heels against the side of it. “It's a pretty story to tell by a fireside. Lot of people lose someone, after all, hardly anybody finds them again. Also you realise she might be a spy and we'll have to knife her, right?”

“Please _do not_.” Rilienus says, which _finally_ , one of his friends isn't entirely bloodthirsty. Although, granted, he should probably be grateful Avis didn't jump out the window, knife in hand, the moment he heard she might be linked to Lyceus.

“There, you see? Rilienus says no stabbing, and we all know he's the sensible one.” he says, which only makes Drusa and Ismene both make faces at him.

“That,” Bull says, “And if she is a spy she's a perfect way to pass shit to Lyceus without Minrathous finding out, right?”

Avis makes a rude noise. Dorian would give it eight out of ten on the Sera Scale. “Like one of those boom-in-a-box things Rocky said he'd teach me to make? Let's pass him one of those.”

“I was thinking more in terms of opening lines of communication.” Rilienus suggests, giving Bull a sideways look that Dorian interprets as _please stop your dwarf teaching Avis to make things explode_.

Dorian looks at him for a moment. He _seems_ serious. “You think the cure for Tranquility is enough to get him to talk to us?”

“That will have gotten his attention, at least.” Rilienus says. “No, I think my father's little opening gambit will get him to talk to us. I spoke briefly to the messenger. He's straight from Minrathous and is supposed to go straight back. I don't think Lyceus has been informed in the slightest that any sort of deal is on the table.”

Marcus snorts. “This is sounding very familiar. The Magisters did it to us all the time. New orders, no explanation, no warning. No clues to whatever was going on in any of their backroom deals. Shut up and kill whatever we point you at, basically. Then, it all changes, shut up and kill something else.”

“Lyceus is not the sort of man you rely on for subtle negotiations, granted.” Rilienus answers. “And even if he was-- well, he's Laetan.”

“Oi.”

Rilienus smiles apologetically at Ismene. “I am speaking from my father's point of view, no offence meant.” he says. The look on Ismene's face remains at _offence taken_. “Although I think Lyceus will certainly take offence, when he finds out. The only question is how he will react. He's known to be... unpredictable.”

“Unpredictable like, might go all demony?” Avis asks. “Because I seen that and it aint pretty.”

Rilienus gets that look again. “It is possible he will choose to-- I wouldn't go so far as to say _ally_ himself with us, but at least communicate. It is also possible he will gather up every bit of military power available to him in an attempt to crush us once and for all before any deals can be done.”

“No deals are being done.” Dorian points out. “Your father's not holding his breath, I hope, because his requests are ludicrous and they're not happening.”

“A deal must appear to be possible, though.” Rilienus says. “Don't worry, I have a fair amount of experience with writing counteroffers which boil down to _your requests are ludicrous and they're not happening_. In the meantime, Dieter-- and more importantly, Talia-- must find out that some sort of deal is in the offing. I will speak to Dieter about it-- I would have to, either way, he's the de-facto leader of the ex-Tranquil-- and not forbid him from telling his love what is going on.”

“So if she starts asking, you want us to not tell her she's a spying piece of shit, and instead talk about how much we're looking forward to being able to stab Lyceus with impunity once the deal's done.” Avis says, and then grins. “What? Don't look at me like that, no-boom, you taught me _impunity_ , I like that word, it's not yours any more, I'm keeping it.”

“And if Talia isn't Lyceus' spy?” Marcus asks. “We'll have to spread the tale a little more widely for his other sources to pick it up, and my men, at least, are _not_ going to like the thought of crawling back to Minrathous after we've finally cut the leash.”

They're all looking at Dorian again. “In that case,” he says, after a long moment's thought. “We'll put it to a vote. If it's that people are sick of deals in back rooms between Magisters that they never get to hear of, let alone say anything about, then why not give everyone in the Reformation a say in what we demand of Minrathous?”

* * *

Rilienus just about has kittens, something about the current population of Vol Dorma added to those in the outlying regions and the complexity of organising any sort of polling system, especially given the current circumstances, and then sinks deep into a conversation with Marcus about logistics which is undoubtedly extremely interesting if you are Marcus or Rilienus.

It's not as if the concept of taking a vote on certain manners is all that new, but the part where the voting pool will not be limited by whether someone is a Magister, Altus, or property owner (preferably all of the above) certainly is.

Drusa, for her part, makes a few somewhat helpful comments on how thieves sort these things out among themselves, and then comes up with about a dozen suggestions for things they could demand of Minrathous, most of them involving painful if not physically impossible contortions on the part of the Archon.

Bull speaks to Marcus briefly about something, and then he and Dorian have to take care of their own planning – handling the organisation of mercenary corps in the area, the Chargers and Gize's men being the main two groups. Dorian lays out his plans, and Bull adjusts them until they work. Gize will have her own inputs to the arrangements, once she's gotten back, sorted her men and detached Drusa from around her neck, but she rarely argues with Bull's decisions.

This is the sort of thing where Bull shines. It hurts a little, to think of the reasons _why_ he's so good at arranging small groups of fighters to handle running battles against Tevinter mages, but there it is.

After that, Bull goes to check on the Chargers, and Rilienus comes back with yet another list of 'minor issues' he needs to handle, or at least decide how they should be handled and who by; supply lines and requests from the Praesumptor and letters from warily neutral Altus families in areas of south Tevinter not currently on fire, who are trying to play both sides in the hope that they'll avoid anything getting set on fire in the near future.

By the time they're through all _that_ , it's well into the evening. At some point Marcus slides a platter of food between them, contributes to the discussion while nagging both of them to eat. Drusa drags Gize in and they discuss the Praesumptor and how to deny this latest request without causing the sort of offence that causes assassins, while Ismene and Rilienus talk training for the latest group of mages to turn up, which as always ends in Ismene huffing about Altus mages and their assumptions.

Dieter and Talia are nowhere to be seen, which is hardly unexpected after their reunion. Nobody really expects them to surface for a little while. Slightly more worryingly, neither is Avis, having disappeared at some point during the discussions, and he hopes that's not because he's planning anything rash. Rasher than usual, at least.

Finally, Bull returns and Marcus nods in greeting, shoos everyone else out. “Enough for one day. Come, Altus Pacenti, you can argue electoral planning with me over that bottle of good brandy I know you're hiding in your quarters.”

Rilienus has brandy? That _traitor_. However, he finds he doesn't have the heart to comment, not when Rilienus has that look on his face.

Drusa has no such boundaries. “ _Please_ stop, I don't want to know what weird shit my parents get up to in bed.”

* * *

“This way,” Bull says, leading him down a corridor that doesn't lead anywhere near their quarters, or the area where the Chargers have theirs. “Marcus told me the bathhouse has been restored to functional order. Also that he'd keep everyone out of the way if I'd do the same for him another night.”

“I agree with Drusa, here.” Dorian says, hurriedly blanking his mind. “I do not need to know a single thing about what Rilienus gets up to behind closed doors, and vice versa.”

Bull shrugs, letting the matter drop. “Anyway,” he says, pushing the door open. “Here it is.”

There's a welcoming blast of heat and humidity, which indicates the 'functional order' part is right on target. It's not as grand as might be expected; Dorian guesses it was meant for the civil servants who formerly inhabited this building, not for anyone of true note.

Still, there's an antechamber in which they can shed their clothes, and a door that locks from the inside, which is a good start. Somebody, perhaps Marcus or one of his assistants, at least, has made sure towels and bathing products are available. Letting Bull hang back and fiddle with his brace-- from experience Dorian knows he rather dislikes offers of help with it-- he pokes his head through and lights up the other two rooms with a little magelight. One for bathing, one for soaking. There might have been a steam-room, once, but he's guessing it's in the pile of rubble that lies beyond the hastily patched-up north wall. A few of the decorative statues are missing limbs, and he doesn't think that's intentional. The décor, all-in-all, could use bit of a pick-me-up.

In other words, ten years ago he would have been offended if he'd been offered this and now he's unspeakably grateful for it. “Did you attend many bath-houses, when you were in Minrathous?” he asks; he's never asked what Bull was doing there, only the surface questions about bathing and candied dates. That wasn't his amatus, anyway. Not really.

“They generally don't cater to Qunari.” Bull says, with a wry grin.

His eyes fall to the mark the brace leaves behind on Bull's skin when he's been wearing it too long. A thought. “Well, perhaps you'll allow me to demonstrate the service only a proper Tevinter bath-house can provide. Not that this one is particularly proper, but still.” He picks out a few things from the surprisingly good array on offer and gestures to the stone bench at the cooler end of the room. “If you could be seated, please.”

The bench was probably intended for two or three; it fits one Qunari, with room for Dorian if he's willing to sit at least half on Bull's lap. “You going to pass me some soap, then?”

“Good gracious, of course not. You don't wash _yourself_. That's what the bath-house attendant is for.” Ah, and there are the basins, and one of them is in fact large enough that Bull will be able to put his feet in. He tests the temperature of the water, brings it over. “Well, among other tasks, depending on the establishment. I spent quite a lot of time in such places as a youth. Very... educational.”

“I bet.” Bull says, lifting his feet carefully into the basin. “Oh-- that's nice. So you're my attendant today? What _services_ are you offering?”

“That,” Dorian informs him, pulling a mat across from the pile by the wall, so he doesn't ruin his own knees in this whole process, “is for me to know, and you to wait for in breathless anticipation. Give me your left foot.”

Scandalous, needless to say, for a Magister to kneel to any man, much less this man, much less in order to wash his feet. So far beyond the bounds of reasonable that the absurdity of it can't even be described. Of course, he stopped being a Magister the moment the door closed behind him. That's what Bull gives him, more than just his presence beside him in battle. The chance to lay aside his titles and lay down his burdens.

Here, he is just 'Kadan', and there is not a single thing untoward about that man kneeling to care for his amatus. Bull groans, pleased, when he pushes his thumbs into the sole of Bull's foot, when he adds a little heat of his own to his hands as he strokes over his calf. One leg, then the other. Careful around the scars-- there are plenty of those, to go with altogether too many tales from the Chargers that involve doors getting kicked in, to say nothing of sharper stories he doesn't want to dwell on right now.

The solidity of him under Dorian's hands is very comforting. Here are the idle daydreams of his youth made vivid reality. To love, and for it to be as comfortable, as comforting, as this. To care, and to not care that there is no benefit to oneself, no political advantage to be manoeuvred for.

When he looks up, Bull is half-hard. He might be, himself. He's not aware enough of his body right now to know if that's the case.

Into the shallow pool, then, so he can wash Bull's back while he soaks his legs some more. Next door will be warmer, better for a long soak, but this will stop him getting chilled. No horn balm in here, of course-- an oversight. He'll fix that next time. For now, he knows that warm hands at the base of Bull's horns, touches gentle but firm enough not to tickle, are nearly as good.

Ah, but he's been so taken up by that thought, he's forgotten his role. “At this point,” he says, pouring one last basin of rinsing water across Bull's shoulders and shifting back around to his front, “you may proceed to the soaking bath. Unless, of course, you feel I've been neglectful in my duties?”

He drops his gaze, unsubtly. One part of Bull does appear to be terribly neglected, how awful of him. He's contrite, honestly. When he looks up again, Bull is smiling. “I do think you missed a spot, yeah. Come here and I'll show you.”

A pause, as Bull shifts up to sit on the edge of the bath, and as Dorian finds a place in front of him, in the water but kneeling up, hands on Bull's knees, sliding up his thighs. Another, as Bull slides a hand around the back of his neck, and waits until Dorian nods, tapping twice with his left hand, to tighten his grip and tug Dorian forward a little. 

From this excellent vantage point, he considers the scene in front of him. “Well, that _is_ a rather large spot. However did I miss it?”

Bull snorts in amusement. “Clever tongue you've got on you. Let's see what other uses it has.”

He hardly needs a second invitation. Tongue first, then, continuing the pretence of 'bathing', keeping his hands on Bull's thighs. The hand on his neck remains, but merely resting there, while Bull lets him play as he will. Teasing a little, pulling away, pretending to frown at the gathering precome. “Well, this is no good. You're only making more of a mess.”

“You know, I'm beginning to get the feeling this isn't actually the Authentic Tevinter Bathhouse Experience.”

“Oh, hush and let me take care of you.”

He remembers well his early attempts, trying to prove-- what, he doesn't even remember, now. Perhaps, that if he was a deviant, he'd be the best damn deviant Tevinter had ever managed to spit out. He does remember a light touch on his face, _I like a guy who goes for what he wants_ , gentle, not mocking.

Now, he knows that while one can _certainly_ make a great deal of progress repressing one's gag reflex with repeated and extremely diligent practice (ah, happy memories), that what really works on Bull is a combination of eye contact and loud enthusiasm for the task at hand, or in this case mouth _and_ hands.

He might be just a _little_ theatrical in expressing said enthusiasm, but it's entirely genuine. He does love sucking Bull's cock, the taste of him, the noises he makes-- the way that hand tightens just a little on the back of his head when Bull is close.

The low groan when he comes, the way the taste and scent of it fills Dorian's senses for a moment, before he swallows-- well, he is supposed to be keeping things _clean_. “Damn good service at this joint.” Bull says. “I might have to _come again_ , heh.”

“That was terrible, even by your standards.” Dorian informs him, resting his head against Bull's good knee. He's hard, but also not feeling terribly inclined to do anything involving much moving.

“You want a hand with that?” Bull asks, gesturing downwards. “Or other body parts on request, I'm easy.”

“Mmm, I've noticed.” He pretends, for a moment, to consider. “You might as well debauch me here, before we move across for a soak. That way we only need to change the water in _one_ of the baths.”

“Practical. I like it.” Bull says, and does exactly as suggested.

* * *

So they get to decide how to tell Minrathous to go fuck themselves. It's not a bad thing at all in Drusa's mind but they're words. Pavus still don't get how much words don't matter, sometimes. Drusa has her ways of dealing with it, and Avis has his.

When she slips out of Gize's bed, she sees he's left a message in chalk symbols they're sure not ever teaching to any Altuses on a wall he'd know she'll pass by, and sighs a little.

Avis has his ways of dealing, and a spy who comes here is someone what got coming to 'em, but some warning would be good. Drusa's made for being too small and quick and clever to see coming until it's too late, not for cleaning up afters.

On the way back, she sees a group of the new arrivals huddled together, elves mostly. All with the same familiar look to them, and they nod to her because they know she's Family, and she passes by without comment and without harm. She wonders if she ought to explain to Pavus some time how many there are in Vol Dorma now who wear the mark of Shartan. Whether it would matter. Whether it would matter that Avis is one of them, came to her with the ink to make a mark of his own choice, to cover a scar.

Because honestly? Drusa's not so sure how much longer she can keep Avis from doing something _really_ stupid.


	21. The Children

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay! Some of the dialogue in this is ripped from the Canticle of Shartan, which Dorian doesn't recognise because... well, because he's Dorian.

Ismene has learnt a great deal about herself since joining the Reformation.

To begin with: she is capable of killing. It helps, probably, that the first time, in the thick of battle at Brocchus' estate, was in self-defence, the safety of her parents and little brothers still looming uncertain in her mind, and that since then it's always been with some similar purpose-- when hesitation could mean a dear friend's injury or worse, you do not hesitate.

Secondly: she will never be Pavus. Whether you believe that breeding makes a difference, playing catch-up on that many years of proper training isn't easy, after all. To some extent, she is exactly what she appears to be, this Vol Dorma girl. She will never be anything more.

Drusa has taught her a lot about hiding in plain sight.

So when Pacenti and Dieter disappear off for some training session that will probably double as a way of telling Dieter about the communications from Minrathous in a location where there are things he can break, Ismene takes a few supplies – bits of clothing and other things that are distributed to newcomers, and some tea, and goes to see Talia.

“It'll be nice to have another mage around who isn't ex-army or, well, you know, _very very Altus_.” she says, and pours. “I don't know if you noticed, but Pacenti and Pavus both mean well, and sometimes it's very tiring.”

Talia is certainly very pretty, and between the time she arrived and now has managed to find the time and wherewithal to pin her curls in style, have a wash, and stain her lips. She titters, politely, hand to mouth in an obviously trained gesture, and Ismene hates her just a little. “Oh, are they that bad?”

“Pavus, at least, has had some of the stuffing knocked out of him in the south.” Ismene responds. A genuine complaint, this next, no lie in it. “Pacenti will apologise if you call him on it, and then _do it again_.”

“I knew a lot of those sort when I lived in Minrathous.” Talia says, curling her hands around her tea-cup delicately. “I thought it would be different here.

Ismene smiles at her. “The more things change--” she says, spreading her hands for a shrug, a move she's learnt from Gize, that means _cannot be helped_ in Gize's ever-expressive body language. “Oh, they're better than the alternative, by a carter's mile, that's for sure.”

A pause spreads between them. Ismene takes up her tea, and waits. “Well, they brought my Dieter back to himself, that's all I care for.” Talia says, finally.

Another sip. “Oh, of course. Still, they're not from around here, you know? Vol Dorma needs to be looked after by her own people. Like you, and Dieter.”

Talia smiles, as if she's thinks she knows something. “And you?”

Well, it's not a thought she's never had. “And me.” She pushes her tea back. “Peace is coming, Talia. I, for one, am not willing to just sit back and let other people decide what shape it comes in.”

A pause. Oh, Ismene has her now, she can smell it. “You sound very certain there'll be peace.” Talia says, sharp and focused.

“If there's one thing you can count on Pacenti to do, it's strike a hard bargain.” She shrugs, as if she hasn't just dropped a lovely bit of bait into Talia's lap. “Anyway, I actually came to invite you to the duelling sessions, if you've a mind. Can't imagine you got much training in how to fight dirty.”

“I might surprise you.” Talia replies, as a parting shot.

 _And I you_ , Ismene thinks, but she's not foolish enough to say it out loud.

* * *

Dorian comes back in through the gates of Vol Dorma to a messenger, one of the slightly awkward ones who are the kind of mage who apparently aspires to be Rilienus one day. They're not so bad. Slightly less likely to set things on fire than the kind of mage who apparently aspires to be Dorian some day.

There are quite a number of _those_. It is equal measures flattering and perturbing, to be honest. Some of them take their imitation a little seriously, and not everybody has the necessary cheekbones to make facial hair look good.

“Magister Pavus,” he says, as Dorian has been utterly unable to train anyone out of addressing him as such. “Enchanter Pacenti requests your presence in the main holding cells. Rather immediately.”

There's the usual calls of greeting as they progress, but there's a strange feeling in the air. A few scattered groups of people carefully not looking at each other in the way that suggests a brawl is brewing or just passed.

Drusa, who has been out all day with him 'scouting and stabbing' as she puts it, taps him on the shoulder. “I'll keep you company.” she says. For a moment there's some tension in her grin, and then it's gone. Maybe he imagined it. “Got some stuff to talk to No-Boom about.”

They do, of course, have need of the holding cells. There are still a good number of local magistrates-- the Soperati ones, at least-- to deal with the everyday business of a city. Which is to say, Reformation or not, pockets still get picked, bar brawls get out of hand now and then, lovers' quarrels still go awry.

Dorian is not, generally, asked to give his opinion on such matters.

When he arrives, Rilienus has one of his serious faces on. “All went well, I hope?” he asks, and then moves swiftly on before Dorian can really answer. “Because I have been dealing with a rather public murder incident, and it's going incredibly poorly.”

“Ooh, who got offed?” Drusa asks.

Rilienus gives her an offended look, and sighs. “Valerius, the merchant.”

“So we're not crying.” Drusa responds, immediately, while Dorian frowns and tries to remember who this is. She peers up at his expression and shrugs. “Tall and bony, bad teeth, got a smack for profiteering a couple of months back? Barmaids hate him – wandering hands.”

Doesn't sound like a very likeable fellow, but still not really ringing any bells. Rilienus sighs at Drusa again. “While I am certainly not personally grieving over his decease, the manner of it is what is of concern. In particular, the public nature of it. In a well-ordered society people don't walk up to other people on the market square and knife them in the kidneys.”

“Says you. Took him out with one blow? Niiiice.” Drusa is _not_ helping.

“I take it we're here because you have the murderer in custody.” Dorian says, deciding to ignore Drusa's apparently attempts to needle Rilienus.

He nods. “She allowed the guards to arrest her without any fuss. A model prisoner, really, apart from the bit where she refuses to explain who she is or why she killed Valerius. All she will say is that she has a message for the Redeemer. She's an elf, and I'm presuming a former slave, from the scars, but funnily enough nobody will admit to knowing who she is. For the moment, I am putting the rumour about that it was someone with a personal grudge, which will hopefully quell some of the anxieties.”

From the strange stillness in the streets as he walked here, Dorian is guessing that this isn't working that well. “I better talk to her, then.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Rilienus says. “She is of course disarmed and restrained, but still, please be careful. I hope it has occurred to you this entire thing was a plan to get close enough to assassinate you.”

“She say anything when she done him? Like about Shartan or something?” Drusa interjects. Rilienus twitches, very minutely. “Yeah. She's not here to assassinate Pavus.”

 _Shartan_? “That bit seems like relevant information, Rilienus.”

“Rumours, which I haven't yet been able to confirm.” Rilienus retorts, although he does look a little shame-faced.

If Rilienus has one flaw, it's his habit of trying to take things on by himself, which means he might be hiding something from Dorian because he thinks it's more helpful to keep it from him. Dorian makes a mental note to poke him about it later-- also Marcus, who these days often is a partner in the scheme to Keep Things We've Decided Are Minor Issues From Pavus.

First, though, he thinks he really needs to talk to this woman. The holding cells with the highest security are in the central area, behind a couple of firmly locked doors, guarded by Marcus' soldiers, and with tiny high windows that don't so much let light in as allow individual sunbeams to struggle through the shadows. It is damp, despite how dry the rest of Vol Dorma is. Dorian doesn't know why these places are always so _damp_.

And there, sitting on a bench at the far end of the cell, is the woman in question. He gets one of the guards to lend him a stool-- a rickety, three-legged thing-- and brings it into the cell with him. Rilienus' expression says he'd much rather this was all conducted through the cell door, and he looks like he's about to protest when Dorian asks for them to close the door behind him and leave them to talk.

Drusa grabs Rilienus' wrist at that point, though. “Come on, No Boom, I've got things to talk to you about anyway. It's about information, you'll like that.”

The guards lock the door, a unpleasant metallic _clunk_ of bolts sliding into place. Still, the woman does not speak. Her hair is haphazardly shorn short, and she is dressed only in loose trousers and a short-sleeved tunic stained with blood, barefoot. The scars Rilienus mentioned are clear on her wrists. He doesn't need to ask about that. Avis has similar. “I apologise for the quality of the accommodations.” he says. “I hope they at least offered you a blanket.” It is actually quite chilly, here in the damp. Perhaps he should have Rilienus check what provisions are offered to prisoners, they're not barbarians here, or at least he hopes so.

The woman only smiles calmly at him. “I have expected nothing of them, and my expectations are ever-met.”

Her words have something of the tone of Gize, reciting poetry. “I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me your name, to start?”

“Shartan.” she replies, that same calm smile. “We are all Shartan. And you are the Redeemer. A sign.”

Well, he's not entirely sure what that's supposed to mean, but to borrow a phrase from a famous novelist of his acquaintance, _well, shit._ “That's just a name some people gave me. It doesn't have to mean anything.” Damn Rilienus and his propaganda. Dorian will have to have words with him. Again.

“The name is not important. We have not been waiting for a name. We have been waiting for a sign.”

Suddenly Dorian can emphasise very well with the Inquisitor and her tendency to try to sink through the floorboards when people started calling her the Herald of things. “And Valerius?”

“We have known betrayal before. This time, we will clear the path of all betrayers. We will take up the blades of our enemies, and carve a place for ourselves in this world.”

Again, with the tone that sounds like she's quoting poetry, although it's still nothing Dorian recognises. “While I understand he might have been a rather unpleasant fellow, could I possibly ask that you refrain from carving that place in the middle of the market square? Just a thought.”

She lies back down on the bench, carefully rearranging the chains to do so with what looks like the ease of long practice. “Make no bargains with Minrathous, Redeemer. The Children of Shartan will not be betrayed again.”

After that, she falls silent. Nothing he says or asks gets any response; eventually he has to admit defeat, calling the guard to come let him out of the cell again.

Outside, he gets someone to direct him to Rilienus and Drusa, who appear to be mid-argument. “Tell No-Boom to stop being such a _mage_.” Drusa says, the moment he enters.

“She has been withholding information that could be critical--”

“--you can't just blab about the Children, it's not your business, it's barely even _my_ business, like you don't have any secrets, anyway--”

“Right.” Dorian says. “Rilienus, hush a moment. Drusa, if you know anything about this Children of Shartan business, please explain, because our prisoner in there just told me enough to make me very confused.”

Drusa pauses a moment, obvious hesitation. “We should probably find Avis, first.”

“Avis?”

“You know that whole thing where you offered him your blade so he could fight by your side?” Drusa says. “I suppose you never spent much time listening to the kind of stuff slaves whisper about among themselves when the masters aren't about, but it's kind of more important than I guess you meant it to be.”


	22. Knowledge Is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am the slowest being on the planet but my love for the Lyceus twins will not let this fic die

Drusa seems to think this is something that Avis and Dorian need to discuss by themselves. Rilienus agrees, although only eventually and not particularly gracefully, and Dorian suspects he'll hear an earful about the subject at a later date. Rilienus is quite good at biding his time.

Drusa leads him to one of the rooftops that Avis likes to perch on, on occasion, and then disappears, in his customary fashion. Avis is by himself, but Dorian has that itch between his shoulderblades that makes him think maybe they're being watched. “Apparently we ought to talk.”

“We could not.” Avis suggests, staring out to the murky horizon. “We could not talk, and go fight shit. I'll stab it, you make it go boom. Deal?”

It's not an unwelcome suggestion, altogether. “Maybe later. Avis, are you running a rebellion _inside_ my rebellion?” 

Avis stares at him for a long moment. “Not on purpose.” he mutters, finally. “It just sort of... happened. People kept asking me what we should do, and I didn't want to tell them I was just making it all up as I went along. Now they're saying I'm a Shartan, and it's all signs and stars and fucking canticles. I just wanted to fight. Maybe help some people. Mostly fight.”

Dorian remembers that rather a long while back he thought he'd just pop over the border to deal with some leftover Venatori. “Believe it or not, I can imagine at least a little how you're feeling. So. Shartan?”

“ _A_ Shartan. Not _the_. Don't suppose you'd know anything about _him_ , what with it not having anything to do with making things go boom.” Avis replies, turning back to the horizon.

Of course he-- well, he's _heard_ the name, at least. Banned books were something of an interest, back in the day. Controversies surrounding Chantry canon, something less of an interest. “Not in great detail, admittedly. An elven slave among the confidants of Blessed Andraste, I can see why that wouldn't go down well in certain quarters.” Solas would probably have had something to say on the matter, if Dorian hadn't spent much of his time in the Inquisition avoiding his lectures on elven history like some sort of plague, perhaps one that made you go bald.

“Shartan lead an army of slaves, and Andraste was the mage who fought to help free them. She gave him a blade.”

Avis has about a dozen sharp objects on his person at all times, but still, Dorian's old belt knife, in the grubby leather sheath that doesn't match anything else he ever wears, is a constant. “Wait. In this story, am _I_ Andraste?”

He really doesn't know what to make of that. Trevelyan seemed to take the whole Herald business fairly well in her stride. Questioning her about it had only earned him some dour Southern metaphors involving stonemasonry which had Sera giggling about _tools of the Maker_ for three weeks straight. Certainly, he believes, in his own way, but any combination of religious fervour and sharp pointy objects makes Dorian a little nervous.

Avis shrugs. “I didn't think much of it at first, but when other people tell it on it got bigger. It's an old story. Everyone knows some version of it. Want to know how it ends?”

“Given what I know of the old tales of Tevinter, I'm going to guess 'everybody dies'?”

“Someone makes a deal with some fucking Magister, and betrays them, and then everybody dies.”

Ah. Hence the reaction to certain recent events. “I am doing what I can to protect as many as I can.”

Avis is silent for a moment. “Good _intentions_. But in the end, if you had to make the choice? My people, or peace with Minrathous?”

 _My_ people, he says, with more conviction than Dorian remembers ever having in his life. “I'm hardly planning to trade one for the other. It's not that simple.”

“It's that simple. Don't fuck it up, Pavus. I kind of like you.” His brow furrows, but his hand stays firm on the knife. “Making deals with magisters, Dieter's posh girlfriend sending messages to our enemies-- I don't like those.”

Now there's a bit of information that's new to him. “Talia did _what?_.”

“No-boom didn't tell you?” Avis says. “He told me it was a thing, and not to let anyone stab her.”

“I'm going to have a word with Rilienus.” Dorian says, grimly. “You-- try not to overthrow me or kill anyone I wouldn't while I'm gone.”

“Suppose I can try.” Avis says, slipping to his feet. “You're going to yell. Can I watch?”

“ _No_.”

* * *

“ _Dammit_ , Rilienus!”

Rilienus looks at him, shoos off the startled-looking young mage who was in the middle of some meeting with him, and sighs. “Close the door behind you, Lita, would you?” When she's gone, he sighs again, looking Dorian over. “Avis mentioned the thing with Talia.”

“You _didn't_ mention the thing with Talia, is rather the bit I'm annoyed about.”

“I fully intended to bring the matter to your attention, when the information was fully confirmed.” Rilienus says. “It's a matter of priorities, and the entire 'stabbing in the marketplace' situation seemed rather more urgent. I did not lie--”

“Your family have made their fortunes in the broad swathe of moral grey between what is a lie and what is technically the mere withholding of information, as I recall it.”

“I have the distinct impression I am being accused of something.” Rilienus says, and somehow manages to look convincingly offended about the matter.

“ _Technically_ , you are not. See how annoying that is?”

“I am _trying_ to make order out of the chaos that follows you everywhere you go.” Rilienus says. “Besides, I thought you and Marcus would be glad to know that I now have a plan for passing selected information to Lyceus that doesn't involve getting knocked out, which is both painful and inconvenient.”

“I would be gladder about it if I was let know about it in advance this time. So I take it the plan is that we know she's a spy, and we don't do anything about it?” Dieter's going to love that one, although Dorian doesn't have to ask to know that Rilienus has already decided to not tell Dieter anything about it.

“We must presume Lyceus has spies here. It's so much easier when we already know who they are.” Rilienus sighs. “I understand that Avis' associates _mean_ well, but they are making my life a little difficult.”

“Is there anything _else_ I should know?”

“You sent a reply to my father's charming offer. Dear Magister Pacenti, very amusing, do contact me when you have an offer that's not a complete joke, yours sincerely, and so on.” Rilienus shrugs. “I had one of my apprentices fake your signature, Father could probably spot if it was me.”

Oh, wonderful, Rilienus is training other people to fake Dorian's signature and cough politely, now. “So now we wait?” Dorian hates waiting, as a strategy or otherwise.

“Talia most likely contacted Lyceus to confirm that the cure for Tranquility exists. He may reach out with an offer. Or Minrathous comes back to us with an offer that isn't entirely insulting.”

He wouldn't hold his breath, personally. “Or they both decide that sounds like too much trouble, and send an army.”

“Marcus assures me that our defences are in top order.” Rilienus says. “You could go train with everyone, they'd like that. The Redeemer, a man of the people, rubbing shoulders with the common man, teaching young Laetan mages to set things on fire with style, and so on and so forth. I'll have the artists sit in, shall I?”

“Stop commissioning propaganda about me.”

“Nonsense, it's part of my job.” Rilienus says firmly. “Trust me, please, Dorian, to do that job. I will be of limited use to you if anybody does decide to send an army. I'm not blind to my own limitations. Let me help you, in the best way I know how.”

“I expect more regular updates on what's going on from now on.” Dorian warns him.

“Oh, certainly. You could even turn up and sign off your own paperwork, on occasion.” Rilienus retorts.

Dammit, he's never been able to hold a grudge against Rilienus for long. And he supposes it's true, that Dorian tends to duck out of meetings Rilienus arranges because they generally involve words like 'budgetary constraints'.

He wonders what it was Talia wrote to Lyceus, if she did.

He wonders how bad it's going to be when Dieter finds out.

* * *

Castor Lyceus orders the correspondence by urgency and then considers his brother's likely response to the brief piece of information second to top of the list, in combination with the information courtesy of Talia which he has placed at the top of the pile.

It would probably be best to find his brother on the training field to deliver this information, rather than waiting for Pollux to visit his office to check on him as he is likely to do once this mornings' training session is complete. The information is urgent. Also there is paperwork in his office, and it would be inconvenient if Pollux set it on fire. Pollux does not always take into account the importance of paperwork when he is having emotions.

He should probably try to ensure as much of the paperwork is taken care of as possible, as he doubts he will be as efficient when he is no longer Tranquil.

Pollux is in the furthest part of the training fields, by himself. This is normal. It seems a suitable time to interrupt.

“Information on the Reformation, received from Talia.” he announces.

“Good?” Pollux asks, and then without waiting for an answer, snatches the letter from him, glances at it, and then envelopes him in an embrace so tight Castor has to take a moment to confirm he is still able to breathe. It also pins his arms to his side, relieving him of the necessity of trying to figure out the correct way to hug back.

Wetness on his skin. Castor cannot remember when he last saw his brother cry, nor does he know the correct response, so he stays still, and waits.

“I knew she would break my heart.” Pollux sobs into his neck. “I knew it wasn't a lie. I _knew_ it.”

How, Castor is not sure, as his own analysis had given no better odds than two in five that the information wasn't just all part of some elaborate trick. He is, still, his brother's weakness. A factor to be accounted for. If it is corrected, will things be made better? How is he to measure that?

Uncertainty. When Pollux's grip on him relaxes a little, he extracts a handkerchief and offers it, because by now Pollux's face is quite damp. Also, there is something he should confirm. “Did you read all the information?”

Pollux smooths out the letter, crumpled in one hand, and this time takes a much longer look at it, then snorts. “A deal with Minrathous? Not unless somebody swapped out Archons while I wasn't looking. Probably just some politicking with that assortment of children who follow Tilani around like idiot ducklings.”

Wordlessly, Castor hands him the other letter and waits. They're quite some distance from any other people or easily damaged structures. It should be fine.

“That seven-faced bastard.” Pollux growls, and Castor feels the air around them grow warm and heavy. Even when he could fear, though, he does not recall ever fearing Pollux. Neither his magic nor his temper have ever been turned in Castor's direction. “What did I expect, though? What did I fucking _expect_?”

This new information does put previously considered plans in a new light. “What will we do?”

“We get you that cure.” Pollux says. “No matter what the cost.”

Castor likes these boots with the silver buckles. Castor likes robes of blue and green. Castor likes red wine, and puts too much pepper on his food. Castor likes otters, and is just a little bit scared of horses.

These are facts. He knows these, and they are easy to balance. Easy to accept the right gifts, quote the right poems. Pollux is happy, when Castor likes the things that Castor is supposed to like.

Castor would want the cure.

Castor loves his brother.

These facts are less easy to balance. “It's not right.” he says.

Pollux looks down at the letter crumpled in his hand. “The information?”

If he was cured, would he know which words to pick? Communication should be a simple, efficient process, so why does he so often find himself having to clarify statements that should be obvious? How to explain the outcome of an analysis that his brother should be intelligent enough to perform for himself, yet seemingly never does? “Pollux Lyceus is not an acceptable cost.”

Pollux freezes a moment, and then smiles. It looks like he may cry again, which is worrying because Castor does not have another handkerchief. “You are going to yell at me so much.”

Extrapolate his meaning. Castor does not currently see the need for yelling, as it is an inefficient mode of communication excepting in emergencies, so Pollux is speaking in future tense, as if his cure is a matter of fact rather than possibility. Consider interactions remembered between himself and his brother, before Tranquility, consider Castor Lyceus' opinions of Pollux Lyceus putting himself in danger, an example being, volunteering for service in Seheron. Consider the personal risks taken by Pollux Lyceus up until now, in searching for a cure. He cannot disagree with Pol's analysis. “That seems likely.”

Pollux laughs, and hugs him again. “We better come up with a damn good plan.”

Also sensible analysis. “Yes.”


End file.
